Welcome to Unregulated to Regulated — my small corner of the internet where I write about rebuilding the nervous system, stress management, invisible illness, recovery, and learning how to live slowly in a culture addicted to speed.
Short Synopsis
A recent Gallup poll says U.S. employee engagement has fallen to its lowest level in a decade. Dr. Sara A. Reed adds the more concerning signal underneath it: leader engagement is dropping, too. This piece explores what those two truths mean from a nervous system perspective, and why what many companies call a culture problem is often a physiology problem hiding in plain sight.
What We’ll Explore
Why declining engagement is not just a management metric, but a nervous system signal
Why disengaged leaders create more than poor morale; they create chronic uncertainty
What workplaces need more than surveys, perks, and branded wellness language
I was scrolling through LinkedIn the other day, half-reading, half-listening, the way we all do now, and I found myself pulled into a conversation I couldn’t quite scroll past. It started as a thread on employee engagement, then turned into a back-and-forth about leadership, burnout, and what’s really happening inside organizations right now. I wasn’t just observing it—I was in it, commenting, thinking, noticing what people were saying and, more importantly, what they weren’t saying. Because underneath all the language about productivity, culture, and performance, I kept hearing something else entirely. I kept hearing the nervous system. And once you see that layer, once you understand how deeply our physiology shapes how we show up at work and in life, you can’t unsee it. This is the work I care about, the work I’ve built my life around, and it’s the lens I want to bring to this conversation.
When I read the latest Gallup data on employee engagement, I did not think, Here we go again, another workplace trend piece. I thought, Of course. Of course, people are disengaging. Of course, they are pulling back. Of course, they are doing the bare minimum, updating their LinkedIn profiles, and fantasizing about quitting in the car before they walk into the office or log on to Zoom. The more interesting question is not why engagement is down. The more interesting question is why anyone is surprised.
Gallup reported that only 31% of U.S. employees were engaged in 2024, the lowest level in a decade, while 17% were actively disengaged, also matching 2014 levels. Engagement has fallen from a peak of 36% in 2020, which Gallup says translates to about 8 million fewer engaged workers. The biggest drops are showing up in role clarity, feeling cared about, and feeling encouraged in development. Only 46% of workers strongly agree that they know what is expected of them, 39% strongly agree that someone at work cares about them as a person, and only 30% strongly agree that someone encourages their development. Managers themselves are not faring any better, with Gallup also putting manager engagement at 31%. (Gallup.com)
When I read Dr. Sara A. Reed’s LinkedIn post, and I thought, yes. That is the conversation underneath the conversation. She points out that while everyone is talking about declining employee engagement, fewer people are discussing the more troubling signal underneath it: leader engagement is falling, too. In her words, when leaders disengage, “it doesn’t stay contained. It cascades,” and what follows is exactly what many teams are living with now: hard conversations get avoided, decision-making becomes transactional, clarity disappears, and burnout is modeled instead of resilience. Her final line is the one that stayed with me: engagement doesn’t trickle down. It echoes. (LinkedIn)
That is not just a leadership problem.
That is a nervous system problem.
When people talk about engagement, they often treat it as a motivational issue. As if employees have simply become less enthusiastic. As if managers need better talking points, stronger vision statements, more compelling all-hands meetings, or one more “wellness initiative” involving herbal tea, a mindfulness app, and a room no one uses because it still smells faintly like carpet glue and resentment. But from where I sit, and from the work I do every day, disengagement often has less to do with laziness or apathy than with physiological overload.
A dysregulated nervous system does not care about your company values slide.
It cares about whether the environment feels safe enough to stay connected.
Human beings do not remain engaged under chronic uncertainty forever. At first, they try. They work harder. They over-function. They read the room. They compensate. They carry extra emotional weight for a boss who is checked out or a leader who is stretched too thin to make clear decisions. Eventually, though, the system adapts. It either mobilizes into anxiety and hypervigilance, or it conserves energy and starts to shut down. In the language of everyday work life, that shutdown looks like withdrawal, silence, cynicism, procrastination, emotional flatness, or the phrase I hear constantly now: “I just don’t have it in me.”
And honestly, I get it.
For years, I worked in high-output environments. I know what it is to be always on, always responsive, always carrying one more thing. I also know what it is to break your own nervous system by living too long inside urgency and calling it ambition. That experience changed how I see (almost) everything, including the workplace. What many organizations call disengagement, I often see as a body that has stopped believing effort will lead to safety, clarity, or meaningful reward.
Gallup’s numbers back this up more than most leaders realize. If only 46% of employees clearly know what is expected of them, that is not simply a communication failure. That is a daily biological stressor. Ambiguity keeps the nervous system scanning. If only 39% of employees feel someone at work cares about them as a person, that is not merely a culture issue. That is a loss of relational safety. If only 30% feel encouraged in their development, that is not just disappointing. That is demoralizing in the most embodied sense. The system stops investing when the environment stops signaling possibility. (Gallup.com)
This is why Dr. Reed’s point about leaders matters so much. If leaders are disengaged, employees do not just notice the mood. They organize around it. They feel it in delayed responses, shallow feedback, vague priorities, and the subtle emotional absence that says, “I am here, but not really here.” People are exquisitely good at detecting when the person in charge is not fully available. Stephen Porges’ work on neuroception helps explain why. The nervous system is constantly scanning for cues of safety or threat outside conscious awareness. Tone of voice, facial expression, predictability, clarity, follow-through — all of it matters. A disengaged leader creates more than frustration. They create uncertainty. And uncertainty is exhausting. (LinkedIn)
This is also why the endless parade of engagement initiatives so often falls flat. You cannot survey your way out of a dysregulated culture. You cannot hand out a wellness stipend large enough to offset chronic ambiguity, emotional neglect, and invisible pressure. You cannot ask people to be more resilient in a system that keeps quietly teaching them not to trust what comes next. If the leader is depleted, the team will absorb that depletion. If the manager is unclear, the team will metabolize that confusion. If the culture rewards overwork and performative positivity, the nervous system will eventually call the bluff.
Another part of the Gallup data deserves more attention: who is feeling this decline most? Younger workers have experienced the largest declines in engagement since 2020, especially in feeling cared for and having opportunities to learn and grow. That matters because younger employees are not just asking whether a company pays well. They are asking, often unconsciously, whether this place is worth attaching to. If the answer feels uncertain, they detach first. That is not entitlement. It is adaptation. (Gallup.com)
I suspect many high achievers reading this know exactly what I mean, even if they would never use nervous system language to describe it. They are the people who still look functional from the outside. They lead the meeting, answer the email, hit the deadline, parent the kids, make the dinner reservation, and remember to send the thank-you note. But underneath it all is a body that has been running hot for too long. Not dramatic. Just too long. They may not call themselves stressed. They may call themselves responsible, driven, or indispensable. But the body is less interested in the branding. The body keeps score in simpler terms: safe or not safe, clear or not clear, sustainable or not sustainable.
And that is where I think the conversation has to go next.
Not just: how do we improve engagement?
But: what would it look like to build workplaces that do not chronically dysregulate the people inside them?
That answer is not glamorous. It is not a hack. It is not a perk. It starts with clearer expectations, better manager support, and leaders who are engaged enough themselves to create steadiness for others. Gallup’s own findings point directly to role clarity, care, and development as the places where the biggest breakdowns are happening. Those are not soft extras. Those are foundational conditions for a regulated workplace. (Gallup.com)
I am not saying every engagement problem is a nervous system problem. I am saying you will not solve engagement without understanding the nervous system. People do not stay connected to environments that keep their bodies in chronic vigilance. They do not innovate well there either. They comply, they perform, they numb out, or they leave.
And perhaps that is the real message inside both the Gallup report and Dr. Sara A. Reed’s post. The problem is not that employees suddenly forgot how to care. The problem is that too many workplaces have become physiologically expensive places to care from.
So here is the question I would leave leaders with, especially the ones wondering why their teams seem tired, detached, and hard to reach: when your people walk into work each day, does your culture ask their nervous systems to brace, or does it give them enough clarity, steadiness, and trust to stay connected?
That answer is probably telling you more than your engagement survey ever will.
Thanks for being here and slowing down with me for a few minutes.
In a world that keeps accelerating, learning how to regulate our nervous systems may be one of the most important skills we develop.
If you’re practicing that too, you’re in the right place.
Come practice with me.
