As CEOs, business owners and leaders in 2025, managing diverse teams and keeping engagement and productivity levels high, you’ve got your work cut out for you.
According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 Report, last year global employee engagement fell to the same levels we saw during COVID, costing the world economy over CA$595.68 billion in lost productivity.
“In 2024, the global percentage of engaged employees fell from 23% to 21%. Engagement has only fallen twice in the past 12 years, in 2020 and 2024. Last year’s two-point drop in engagement was equal to the decline during the year of COVID-19 lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders.” - Gallup
The primary cause? A drop in manager engagement. Particularly young managers under 35 years old (a drop of five percentage points) and female managers (a drop of seven percentage points).
Tim Rutledge, Ph.D., Director of the Centre for Employee Retention and Engagement Services and author of Getting Engaged: The New Workplace Loyalty, defines employee engagement as being “committed to, fascinated by, and attracted to the work”. Furthermore, Rutledge says that when employees are engaged, “they care about the company’s future and are willing to go beyond the call of duty in order to help their organization exceed”.
Reasons that Gallup cites for the drop in manager and employee engagement include:
A drop in manager engagement affects team engagement, which affects productivity. In short? Your company’s bottom line is at risk if the manager (and employee) engagement breakdown isn’t addressed.
An increasing number of organizations are harnessing the power of coaching to get their engagement and productivity levels up.
In its essence, coaching is more than just guidance. As the International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines it, “It’s a strategic partnership aimed at fostering growth, developing skills, and achieving specific objectives designed to unlock an individual’s potential and enhance their performance. Unlike mentoring, which often relies on the transfer of wisdom from one person to another, coaching is action-oriented and focused on tangible results…making coaching a critical tool for driving measurable outcomes in professional and personal settings.”
But as seasoned insurance professional, leader, Learning Program Manager, and coach, Leanne Taylor, explains, if coaching is only promoted and implemented at the C-suite level (as is often the case), it can create a significant gap when it comes to one of the most critical leverage points in any organization - the front-line or second-level manager.
“Your managers are the people directly responsible for engaging teams, delivering results, and translating strategy into action,” Leanne explains. “And they’re often promoted based on technical expertise, not necessarily leadership readiness.”
Coaching at this level can:
As Leanne says, “When organizations extend coaching beyond the C-suite and invest in their middle layers of leadership, the ripple effect is powerful - front-line teams feel more supported, customers experience better service, and overall performance improves in meaningful, sustainable ways.”
This is very much in line with Gallup’s recommendations. In fact, one of Gallup’s top three tips to address manager breakdown is “to teach managers effective coaching techniques to boost manager performance by 20 to 28%.”
As the report outlines, “Some managers have a natural gift for inspiring and developing people, but many do not. The good news is that effective coaching can be taught.”
According to a Gallup study, participants in a manager training course focused on management best practices experienced up to 22% higher engagement than non-participants.
In addition to that, the teams led by those participants saw engagement rise by up to 18%. Manager performance metrics improved between 20 to 28%. These results were found nine to 18 months after training, suggesting that the influence of manager training may have a lasting effect.
The good news for Canadian and US business leaders is that 52% of employees in Canada and the US listed their life evaluation as ‘thriving’, but it’s important to note that this measures how workers feel about their lives overall, including everything outside the workplace.
On the employee engagement front, specifically, 52% of employees stated they’re ‘not engaged’ and 17% ‘actively disengaged’. Canada and the US also have the highest regional percentage of employees experiencing daily stress (50%).
In times of stress and disengagement, establishing positive leadership interventions and putting supportive measures in place at all levels is imperative, especially because the future is set to bring even more rapid change.
As far as disruptions reshaping the jobs and skills landscape goes, the World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs Report 2025 predicts that 67% of the US’s workforce will require upskilling or reskilling by 2030 (a rate exceeding the global average). Similarly, employers in Canada are also anticipating an evolving business landscape, marked by advances in digital technologies, geoeconomic fragmentation, and increased climate-mitigation efforts by 2030.
According to the report, “97% of [Canadian] companies expect AI and information processing technologies to transform their operations…To ensure a steady talent pipeline, employers in Canada are looking to bolster talent progression and promotion processes and are investing in reskilling and upskilling.”
As CEOs, business owners and leaders in Canada, you need to ask yourselves if you’re moving forward with strategies of how ‘things have always been done’ or are you really taking the time to explore new avenues and review what sustainability and succession really looks like in your organization?
In order to support your employees, managers and leaders, and equip them with resilience, confidence and skills that the workplaces of the future are fast demanding, consider instilling a coaching culture in your workplace.
Organizations with strong coaching cultures benefit from increased performance and productivity, while employees enjoy boosted confidence in learning new skills, growing their leadership abilities, and feel more invested and engaged with the company’s vision and values.
Not only is there a strong correlation between coaching and increased employee engagement, with 72% of respondents in the 2023 ICF HCI Defining New Coaching Cultures report acknowledging this relationship, but its impact is appreciated at all levels - from both senior executives (78%) and employees (73%).
Instilling a strong coaching culture can also be a key factor in maximizing your business’s productivity, resilience and longevity, positively influencing how managers communicate with employees and how employees engage with one another, but also how your organization’s values align with your teams’ values, and how your teams interact with your clients.
Leader testimonials after completing Erickson’s award-winning The Art & Science of Coaching™ program:
According to the ICF’s Building Strong Coaching Cultures for the Future report: One in four organizations have a dedicated line item for coaching in their training budget (allocating up to 21% of their overall training budget for coaching initiatives). On top of that, more than four in five organizations plan to expand the scope of their managers/leaders using coaching skills during the next five years.
“Coaching has become a cornerstone of leadership development, particularly for executives...[offering] the opportunity for executives to uncover their blind spots, improve leadership skills and achieve real business results. In a recent survey, company executives reported an average ROI of nearly six times what they invested in the coaching process.” Report: Executive Coaching: Driving Real Results for Leaders in the Built Environment - Future Market Insights Inc
No matter how you look at it, organizational coaching’s relevance in the face of change and disruption is undeniable.
Workplace trends |
Coaching's contribution |
| Not only are the leaders of today (and tomorrow) getting younger, with half of the global population under 30 (Next Generation Now summit) but global employers expect 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030. (World Economic Forum) |
Coaching upskills leaders at all levels to guide their teams in an open, inclusive, and authentic way, paving the way for intergenerational teams that communicate, connect, and work towards common goals. It not only assists with upskilling, but also with setting goals, creating action plans and approaching challenges with a solution-focused mindset. |
| Employees, leaders and managers alike must balance hard and soft skills to thrive in today’s work environments. “Analytical thinking remains the top core skill for employers, with seven out of 10 companies considering it as essential. This is followed by resilience, flexibility and agility”. - World Economic Forum | Erickson’s solution-focused coaching approach teaches analytical thinking, active listening, open-ended questioning, and numerous other ‘soft skills’ that add to a leader’s ability to navigate tricky terrain with calm, resilience and confidence. |
| 64% of global employers globally recognize the importance of supporting employee health and wellbeing as a top priority to increase talent availability over the 2025-2030 period. This is a marked rise from 9th place in the World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs Report (2023 edition). |
Coaching teaches self-awareness in an individual’s personal and professional life, which is a core tenet of mental and emotional wellbeing. It also tackles goal setting and action planning in a way that is aligned with one’s core values and motivations. When this is further aligned with one’s purpose and mission in the workplace, productivity and efficiency rises and new collaborations and ideas have room to flourish. |
Erickson Coaching International celebrates leading the coaching industry for 45 years this year, and last year was awarded the ICF’s 2024 Impact Award for ‘Most Distinguished Global Coach Education Provider’.
To learn more about the organizational impact of coaching and understand what customized coaching initiatives can be put in place to benefit your workforce and bottom line, let’s connect over a virtual coffee.
For more information on MacKay CEO Forums special rates from Erickson and upcoming training, visit this page.