By Orly Benaroch Light

Over the holidays, I hosted six friends for dinner. Half of them shared they’re unhappy at work and their stories stuck with me.

One described an employer who lacked basic compassion and communication. Another spoke about a company that had lost direction and leadership. The third had recently been promoted to management, only to find the role meant working around the clock with no overtime pay and no respect for life outside work.

All three are looking for new opportunities, but with the job market slowing, they feel stuck.

And this isn’t just my dinner table. Gallup reports that only about 31% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, meaning roughly two-thirds are checked out. Globally, more than half of employees are disengaged.

I remembered a moment from my own leadership journey. Years ago, I called an employee into my office after a scheduling mistake. I asked, “What are we going to do now?”

She paused and said something I’ll never forget:

“You always call me in with a problem, but rarely with praise.”

Brené Brown emphasizes that feedback isn’t just about correcting mistakes, it’s about recognizing and valuing contributions. Leaders who celebrate effort and create psychological safety help employees feel seen, trusted, and engaged.

What’s Driving This Detachment?

The scale of disengagement is staggering. Gallup research and field experience highlight several shifts that have collided in recent years:

• Rapid workplace change: Since 2020, many organizations have restructured teams, cut budgets, and asked employees to do more with less.

• Remote and hybrid challenges: Flexibility helps, but distance can create emotional and communication gaps, especially when purpose isn’t reinforced.

• Rising customer demands: Employees feel the pressure as expectations grow, particularly in digital environments.

• Changing employee expectations: People want balance, flexibility, and fair pay. When those needs aren’t met, motivation fades.

• Weak performance management: Too often, expectations are unclear, growth is unsupported, and recognition is missing.

For leaders, this is a wake-up call. Even if turnover appears stable, disengagement carries hidden costs, including lower productivity, resistance to change, and eventual talent loss.

How Do We Turn This Around?

1. Clarify expectations. Employees need to know what success looks like. Goals, priorities, and workloads should be discussed openly and revisited often. Clarity isn’t top-down, it’s a conversation.

2. Connect work to purpose. People want to know their work matters. Leaders must show how individual contributions fit into the bigger picture, celebrate wins, and acknowledge effort, not just mistakes.

The Great Detachment isn’t just a warning — it’s a call to action. My guests said it wouldn’t take much to make work more motivating, but they’ve lost hope because their leaders seem blind to what truly matters.

When leadership behavior remains unchanged, psychological safety is absent, and values stay misaligned, the healthiest employees aren’t the ones who endure the longest. They are the ones who exit deliberately.