Survey: Nearly Half of Leaders Would Give Up Their Title Just to Feel Engaged at Work

Kahoot!'s 2025 Workplace Engagement Report finds only 47% of managers and above feel fully engaged, 26% have considered quitting, and just 17% say their company always provides the tools they need to keep teams motivated.

AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Employee engagement is collapsing, and the crisis starts at the top. According to the new Kahoot! 2025 Workplace Engagement Report, only 47 percent of leaders describe themselves as "fully engaged," even though 79 percent believe their teams still see them as energized. The study of more than 200 U.S. and U.K. HR and training managers and above exposes a widening leadership gap: more than a quarter have considered quitting in the past year, and nearly half (46%) would give up their title just to feel engaged.

Gallup's   202 5 State of the Global Workplace  report confirms the ripple effect, showing global manager engagement dropped to 27 percent with leaders influencing up to 70 percent of team engagement. When leaders run on empty, entire teams follow.

"If leaders are ready to trade away their title for the chance to feel engaged, it signals something profound," said Eilert Hanoa, CEO of Kahoot!. "Leaders are telling us loud and clear that recognition, training and connection matter more than status. Engagement cannot be a side project. If engagement fails at the top, it fails everywhere. The companies that respond will not only retain their leaders but unlock the energy of entire teams."

The Leadership Energy Crisis Is Breaking the Workplace

Thirty-four percent of leaders report feeling burned out daily or several times a week, and 22 percent say they have felt emotionally disconnected from their teams often or always over the past six months, a clear red flag for relational strain at the top. The biggest drivers of manager disengagement are emotional exhaustion from trying to motivate disengaged employees, nonstop change and economic uncertainty, and feeling invisible or undervalued by executive leadership. Similarly, the leading culprits behind leader burnout include juggling engagement with too many other priorities (48%), dealing with employee apathy (48%), and trying to get Gen Z to engage consistently (38%).

Engagement Is Collapsing Under Leaders Who Were Never Trained for It

More than half (57%) of leaders have never received extensive training on how to re-engage teams, and only 17 percent say their company always provides effective tools to keep teams motivated. Almost one in four admit they are not confident leading hybrid or remote teams, leaving many to improvise at a time when alignment matters most. Another 38 percent said they've received only some training but not enough, reinforcing that most leaders feel underprepared for one of their most critical responsibilities. Just 30 percent of leaders gave themselves an A for engaging their teams, while 70 percent know they're falling short. In fact, 40 percent said they would give up their role entirely if it meant their team could be fully engaged — a striking measure of how broken leadership enablement has become.

Recognition Is the Raise Leaders Are Really Asking For

When asked what would most improve engagement, 69 percent of leaders pointed to recognition and incentives, followed by more team connection (57%) and friendly competition/gamification (44%). Recognition was ranked as the number one missing element in their engagement toolkit for 21 percent. On a personal level, leaders said they would be more engaged if they had energy, creativity, or fun in their day-to-day work (58%), more opportunities to grow their skills (52%), better technology to connect with their teams (48%) and open feedback from senior executives (42%). Generational divides are deepening as well, with 61 percent naming Gen Z as the hardest group to engage compared with 20 percent for Millennials.

Companies Talk About Engagement but Cannot Prove It Works

Despite heavy investment in engagement programs, most companies cannot measure their impact. More than a quarter (29%) of leaders admit they lack confidence in tracking ROI, and fewer than a quarter measure engagement clearly and consistently. The top metric leaders wish they could track is productivity driven by real engagement, not just hours logged (29%). Others pointed to outcomes like the energy lift of fully engaged teams and early signals when top talent is ready to leave, though fewer cited these as top priorities.

Engagement Dies the Moment Leaders Stop Listening

Beyond tools and training, leaders are calling for something more fundamental: to be heard. In open-ended responses, many said the one thing they would fix with a magic wand is better communication and recognition from senior leadership. As one respondent put it: "I'd make sure everyone felt genuinely heard and valued — like their ideas actually shape decisions. That alone would boost engagement like crazy." Yet only 14 percent of leaders say training and meetings always spark motivation, showing that the very systems meant to drive engagement are often falling flat.

About the Kahoot! 2025 Workplace Engagement Survey
This survey was conducted online by Researchscape on behalf of Kahoot! from August 12 to 21, 2025, and includes responses from 221 HR and Training professionals in the U.S. and U.K. with the title of manager or above and at least one direct report. Topline results were weighted to be representative of the broader target population.

About Kahoot!
Kahoot!, the global learning and engagement platform company, is on a mission to make learning awesome by empowering everyone—children, students, and employees—to reach their full potential. Our platform enables individuals and organizations to easily create, share, and host engaging learning sessions. Since launching in 2013, Kahoot! has become a global leader, hosting hundreds of millions of sessions with over 12 billion cumulative participants across 200+ countries and regions. Clever, the global identity platform for K-12, is also part of Kahoot! Group, serving millions of educators, students, and schools every day. Headquartered in Oslo, Norway, we also have offices in the US, UK, France, Finland, Australia, Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Denmark, Spain, and Poland.

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SOURCE Kahoot!