Our Take
Engagement isn't a culture problem; it's an operations problem masquerading as one, and HR alone cannot fix it.
Why it matters
Gallup data shows disengagement costs the global economy an estimated $10 trillion annually in lost productivity (per Gallup). As hybrid work scatters conversations and decisions across channels, the fragmentation compounds—and adding AI on top of broken systems will only amplify the noise.
Do this week
Operations leadership: audit your tooling fragmentation before deploying AI; map where notifications originate and consolidate or govern the flow before month-end so managers can see the baseline damage.
Engagement Falls to 2014 Lows as Tool Fragmentation Drains Productivity
Only 31% of US employees report being engaged at work, with 17% actively disengaged, according to Gallup's latest annual workplace report (per Gallup). The numbers represent the worst engagement climate since 2014.
The culprit is not any single tool. Half of all employees face distraction at least every 30 minutes from workplace notifications, with nearly a third distracted every 15 minutes (company-reported research from employee experience platform Unily). Nearly 6 in 10 employees report that digital tools add to their workplace stress.
Video conferencing systems, email platforms and instant messaging applications are the primary offenders. When communications scatter across these channels, the notification noise compounds. Jenny Shiers, chief people officer at Unily, frames the problem plainly: "When communications are fragmented, notification noise from multiple systems builds to the point where employees feel overwhelmed."
The volume of incoming signals means employees miss communications that tie their work to the company's mission. Over time, this erodes both confidence and engagement.
Hybrid environments amplify the fragmentation. Conversations, updates and decisions scatter across channels and time zones. Recognition gets missed. Onboarding loses informal learning. Knowledge becomes siloed. Employees lack the context needed to do their best work. Macaire Montini, a strategic HR leader at HR platform HiBob, describes how small frustrations in workflow accumulate: "Over time, those frustrations can build and start affecting how employees feel about their work and their connection to the organization."
AI Is Adding Complexity Before Orgs Fix the Baseline
Employees now expect speed, access and personalization in how work gets done. AI is raising those expectations faster than most organizations can meet them. But technology alone does not deliver trust, clarity or human connection.
When employees lack visibility into how AI is being used, hesitation replaces confidence. Layering AI onto fragmented systems makes the problem worse, not better. Shiers argues that before AI can be effective, organizations need "a trusted, tightly governed digital home for tools and information to live." Only then can AI create personalized, frictionless experiences that enable speed across the workforce.
The measurement gap compounds the operational gap. Many organizations rely solely on sentiment scores from annual surveys. Surveys do not capture how work actually feels day to day. A complete picture requires patterns across feedback, retention, performance and employee sentiment data, showing where engagement is eroding and why.
Engagement Is a Shared Responsibility, Not an HR Problem
Both practitioners push back on the assumption that HR owns engagement recovery. Shiers states directly: "Engagement has become a shared responsibility across the business. HR plays an important role, but so does leadership, IT, communications and managers."
Managers matter most because they interact with employees daily and have the greatest influence on whether people feel connected to their work. The error most organizations make is assigning responsibility for employee experience to HR alone. Montini is clear: "The employee experience is shaped throughout the business—not just with HR alone."
The fix starts with operations and design. Audit how work gets communicated across your organization. Identify which tools are generating the most notification noise. Consolidate where possible or institute governance so employees can prioritize signal over noise. Then build AI on top of a cleaner foundation.