Gallup published its 2026 Singapore Workplace Report on 22 June, and the topline number is stark: only 14 per cent of Singapore’s workforce felt engaged at work in 2025. That’s below the Southeast Asian average of 25 per cent and the global average of 20 per cent. Singapore has stagnated at roughly this level since 2019.
The report’s more pointed finding, though, is generational. Younger employees are disengaging at a rate that has nothing to do with willingness to work.
A Generational Split That’s Bigger in Singapore Than Anywhere Else
Among workers under 35, only 10 per cent felt engaged, compared to 16 per cent of older employees. Globally, that generational gap is typically two percentage points. In Singapore, it’s more than double that.
Younger workers also reported markedly higher daily stress: 53 per cent compared to 37 per cent for older colleagues. Gallup was blunt about the cause, writing that younger employees “are working in conditions that foster lower engagement and wellbeing,” not that they’re somehow less resilient than previous generations.
Why Well-Being Perks Aren’t Moving the Needle
Most of the senior leaders Gallup interviewed for the report conceded that their organisations’ well-being programmes don’t actually change day-to-day work experience. Employees appreciate the perks. They just don’t address why people are burning out in the first place.
Minister of State for Manpower Dinesh Vasu Dash, speaking at the report’s launch, put the underlying question directly: how do you build an engaged workforce and a workplace together, rather than layering wellness benefits on top of conditions that haven’t changed?
The Manager Factor Nobody’s Training For
Gallup’s data points to one lever that dwarfs the rest: managers. The report found that 70 per cent of the variance in team engagement comes down to the manager, not company strategy, not town halls, not annual surveys.
That’s a specific, measurable gap — and more toward whether managers have had any real mindset training in Singapore that changes how they respond to setbacks, feedback and risk-taking on their teams. A disengaged 24-year-old and an unresponsive well-being programme are, on this evidence, downstream of the same root problem.
