Employee experience statistics for 2026
Review the employee experience statistics shaping engagement, onboarding, wellbeing, and AI at work, each with a named and dated source.
Every statistic on this page carries a named source and a date. Where the number comes from SurveyMonkey research, the methodology is stated so you can decide whether it applies to your workforce.
The bulk of the first-party data here comes from the SurveyMonkey State of Curiosity 2026 study, fielded April 3 to 10, 2026 among 1,925 workers in the United States, with a modeled error estimate of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
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Engagement and retention statistics
Engagement fell globally in the most recent measurement year, and the mechanisms behind it are now well documented: stress, stalled advancement, and an overloaded manager layer. These are the numbers to cite when you need to show that retention risk is structural rather than local.
- 21% of employees globally were engaged at work, down from 23% the previous year. Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2025.
- 40% of all job turnover is attributable to employee stress. Pearson, Under Pressure: Managing Mental Wellness in High-Stress, High-Risk Jobs.
- 95% of workers describe themselves as curious and 60% identify as strongly curious, but only 30% say their workplace strongly rewards curiosity. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 76% of high-curiosity workers take on challenging work, against 27% of their low-curiosity peers, a rate nearly three times higher. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 41% of high-curiosity workers say they are advancing at the pace they want, against 21% of low-curiosity workers. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- Three-quarters of HR leaders report that managers are overwhelmed by their expanding responsibilities, and 74% say managers lack the capabilities needed to guide teams through organizational change. Gartner, The Top 5 Priorities for HR Leaders in 2025.
- 28% of HR professionals agree their HR strategic planning process is fully integrated with business planning. Gartner, The Top 5 Priorities for HR Leaders in 2025.
- Promotion rates have fallen and internal mobility is stalling, narrowing the path to advancement inside companies. Workday, 2025 Global Workforce Report.
- 73% of organizations recognize the importance of redesigning the people manager role, but only 7% are making real progress, a 66-point gap. Deloitte Insights, Human Capital Trends.
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Onboarding statistics
Onboarding data is the thinnest category in published employee experience research, and most of what circulates is either uncited or a decade old. What is well measured is the behavior that decides whether onboarding works: whether a new person will ask a question when they do not understand something.
The figures below all come from the first-party SurveyMonkey study and describe question-asking behavior across the workforce. Read them as onboarding-relevant rather than as onboarding benchmarks.
- 40% of workers have pretended to understand something rather than ask a clarifying question. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 94% of workers in cultures where leaders encourage questions feel safe asking them, against 41% in cultures where questions are discouraged. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 50% of workers have had to redo work because the right questions were not asked at the start. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 46% of workers have watched time and money go into untested assumptions. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 77% of workers want more opportunities to brainstorm with colleagues, the most-requested workplace intervention in the study. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 11% of workers describe their workplace as one that somewhat or strongly discourages asking questions, against 89% who say questions are encouraged. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
Employee wellbeing statistics
Wellbeing data in 2025 and 2026 concentrates on one population: the manager layer. Managers report the highest burnout of any organizational level while spending less than half their time on the people work they were promoted to do.
- 75% of people managers report feeling burnout, the highest of any organizational layer. Simon Sinek Optimism@Work, The Top 10 Things Middle Managers Desperately Need (But Are Afraid to Ask For).
- 55% of people managers struggle with core leadership capabilities, with self-confidence ranking among their top challenges. Simon Sinek Optimism@Work, The Top 10 Things Middle Managers Desperately Need.
- 41% of a manager's time is spent actually managing people, with the rest consumed by administrative work, coordination, and execution. Korn Ferry, Power Shifts 2025.
- 65% of workers in cultures that discourage questions report wasted time or resources, against 44% in cultures that encourage them. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 55% of workers in question-discouraging cultures report missed opportunities, against 44% elsewhere. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 53% of workers say more unstructured time would help them be more curious. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 38% of workers say most of their meetings are open discussion and idea exploration, falling to 15% in cultures where questions are discouraged. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
AI, technology, and the modern employee experience statistics
This is the fastest-moving category and the one where first-party 2026 data is most valuable, because most published AI-at-work statistics predate current adoption levels. The pattern in the SurveyMonkey data is consistent: substituting AI for a colleague correlates with more rework, more waste, and more misalignment, and senior people do it most.
- 82% of US HR professionals believe AI is critical to their company's success. Globalization Partners, 2025 AI at Work Report.
- 58% of workers say a colleague is more reliable than AI, yet 36% of AI users accept AI output as-is or with only a quick check. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 33% of directors and VPs frequently use AI in place of a colleague, against 12% of individual contributors, a rate nearly three times higher. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 68% of frequent AI-instead-of-colleague users experienced rework or mistakes, against 44% of those who never substitute AI for a colleague. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 65% of frequent AI-instead-of-colleague users wasted time or resources, against 40% of those who never do. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 61% of frequent AI-instead-of-colleague users experienced misalignment across teams, against 32% of those who never do. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 59% of frequent AI-instead-of-colleague users missed an opportunity, against 39% of those who never do. SurveyMonkey, State of Curiosity 2026.
- 48% of HR professionals save at least two hours per week by using SurveyMonkey to analyze feedback. SurveyMonkey, 25-'26 Customer Proof Survey. This figure describes SurveyMonkey customers, not the workforce at large.
- 93% of HR professionals agree that SurveyMonkey frees up their time to focus on more strategic work. SurveyMonkey, 25-'26 Customer Proof Survey. This figure describes SurveyMonkey customers, not the workforce at large.
What these statistics mean for your EX strategy
Three things follow from the data above. Engagement is declining while the manager layer that most influences it is the most burned out population in the organization, so manager capacity is the highest-leverage place to intervene. And the biggest measurable cost in the 2026 data is not disengagement itself but rework, which is what happens when nobody asks a question early enough.
The practical implication is about cadence rather than instrument choice. A single annual survey cannot detect a manager-capacity problem in time to fix it, and it cannot tell you whether an intervention worked. For how to sequence engagement, onboarding, manager, and exit feedback into one continuous program, see employee experience management.
How to use these numbers responsibly
If you are citing any statistic from this page externally, three rules apply:
- Carry the source name and date, since a percentage without attribution is not evidence.
- Keep first-party and third-party findings distinct, and never attribute a Gallup or Gartner figure to SurveyMonkey.
- Flag the two customer research figures as describing SurveyMonkey customers rather than the general workforce.
Where SurveyMonkey employee experience data comes from
The first-party statistics on this page come from the SurveyMonkey State of Curiosity 2026 study, fielded April 3 to 10, 2026 among 1,925 US workers drawn from the more than two million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day, with a modeled error estimate of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
That panel is also what makes it practical to benchmark your own results rather than borrowing someone else's, and SurveyMonkey features include global and industry benchmarks alongside your own trend data.
If your next step is measuring rather than citing, manager survey questions covers the instrument that most directly addresses the manager-capacity finding running through this data.
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