May 15, 2026
Your Employee Experience Roundup: The Manager Crisis, Falling Worker Confidence, and Persistent Perception Gaps
Are leaders and their employees actually working in the same organisation? That’s the question that springs to mind when looking at the key events and research findings of this week. Decision-makers think engagement is rising; employees disagree by 21 percentage points. Worker confidence is sliding, but many organisations aren’t tracking it. And new data points to a growing manager crisis — with only 15% of workers saying the role looks appealing.
Meanwhile, a new wave of tech moves is trying to close exactly these gaps — and employees in some of the world’s biggest companies are starting to push back. Here’s what you need to know.
85% don’t want to be managers
Research from Ipsos Karian and Box finds only 15% of non-managers in the UK think the people manager role looks appealing. Rather than lacking ambition or the drive to progress, non-managers are forming a particular view of the role – and what they see puts them off.
Worker Confidence Fell for the First Time in Three Years
Worker confidence is falling in 2026 – both in AI and in organisations’ long-term outlook. But fewer organisations are tracking employee belief. And this is leaving leaders in the dark about how their people actually feel about the future of work. These findings are drawn from three data sets:Manpower Group, Culture Amp and Ipsos Karian and Box.
By 2027, half of enterprises without a people-centric AI strategy will lose top talent
This week, Gartner made this bold prediction based on its 2026 survey of over 12,000 employees and managers across 40 countries.
“The survey revealed that in the shift to an AI-powered workforce, most leaders are mistaking basic access or adoption metrics for transformation,” said Swagatam Basu, Senior Director Analyst, in the Gartner HR practice. “This ‘enablement illusion’ is hiding risks and draining ROI.”
Retailers Are Choosing Cost Over People
Under-pressure retailers feel forced to prioritise cost control over employee experience. Rising labour costs and operational pressures are driving them to rethink how they manage their frontline workforce. This finding comes from WorkJam, following a survey of over 150 retail professionals conducted at Retail Technology Show 2026 in London last month.
46% of decision-makers think engagement has increased; only 25% of employees agree
This perception gap was revealed this week in Reward Gateway | Edenred’s third annual Workplace Engagement Index. The data comes from organisations in Australia and New Zealand, proving that the leadership perception gap we’ve reported on elsewhere extends far and wide. A ‘lack of joy’ is the primary reason cited by nearly half (47%) of employees who report feeling less engaged a figure that rises to 76% among deskless employees.
The AI Firm Now Getting Into Job Placement (of All Things)
OpenAI is set to launch a jobs platform designed to help businesses find AI-savvy workers. Josh Bersin spells out the irony here. The very company that has caused turmoil in the job market is now getting into the job placement business.
A Race to Close Perception Gaps
Perceptyx has launched Develop, an AI learning system that measures comprehension in real time. The multi-agent offering validates employee comprehension as learning happens, giving organisations a direct signal of whether skills can actually be applied on the job.
In April, we reported on LearningPool’s acquisition of WorkStep, which brings together learning delivery and real-time frontline sentiment to manage the entire employee lifecycle. Both these moves suggest the industry is moving from measuring learning activity to measuring learning impact — and vendors are racing to close that loop from different ends.
Workbuzz is offering a potential solution to the leadership perception gap with its new employee feedback product, Dialogue. Leaders record a focused question by video and request responses from their people; employees respond by video, voice note, or text; AI then distils the collective insight within hours. Nationwide’s Branch Network Director is already using it across the branch network.
The layoff and benefits rollback tracker
LinkedIn, Cisco and Amazon all announced layoffs this week. It’s hard to keep count but, at the time of writing, over 137,000 people impacted by layoffs in 2026 so far. Of particular note:
- Oracle Rejects Laid-Off Workers’ Petition – Some Lost Hundreds of Thousands in Unvested Stock
- TTEC Pauses 401(k) Match to Fund AI, taking a hit on pension contributions for US workers and continuing the benefits rollback trend
Something is shifting in how employees are responding to all of this. Google DeepMind employees are voting to unionise. Meta faces employee discontent over AI surveillance. Whether this represents the beginning of a broader recalibration between employers and employees is a question worth watching. More on this next week.
Get in touch
That’s it for this week. I’ll be heading to Engage Employee Summit in London next week. Get in touch if you’re going! As always, you can connect with me on LinkedIn or drop me a line at [email protected]
Becky Norman is the Employee Experience Editor for CXM. With 14 years in digital publishing, she champions the organisations and practitioners creating exceptional experiences for their people — and driving measurable impact on customer success as a result. Prior to this role, Becky spent eight years as editor of B2B publications HRZone and TrainingZone, covering the most pressing issues facing HR, people, and learning leaders. In 2020, she co-created Culture Pioneers – a global campaign recognising the organisations shaping workplace culture to drive both business performance and employee experience.
