Managers influence productivity through the conditions they create: clarity, trust, focus time, and useful collaboration. The available research combines manager-specific findings with broader knowledge-worker measures, so the populations and periods matter. Older Gallup findings describe U.S. manager research reported in 2015; newer comparisons describe global results from 2023; Microsoft telemetry extends through February 15, 2025.
Contents
- Manager capability and team outcomes
- Engagement and well-being
- Workload, communication, and interruptions
- Meeting friction and lost focus
- Trust as a productivity condition
- What early AI measurements show
Manager capability and team outcomes
Gallup’s manager research reported in 2015 associated selecting managers for talent with gains across several business outcomes. The findings are best read as reported relationships from that research, not as a guarantee that changing a hiring decision will produce the same result in every organization.
Companies that selected managers for talent reported a 48% increase in profitability and a 22% increase in productivity. The same companies reported a 30% increase in employee-engagement scores and a 17% increase in customer engagement. Turnover was reported as 19% lower. These figures come from Gallup’s “What Separates Great Managers From the Rest”, reported in 2015.
The manager-level engagement numbers show why capability and experience may matter to the operating environment. Among U.S. managers classified as high-talent, 54% were engaged at work. Engagement was 39% among managers classified as having functioning talent and 27% among those classified as having limited talent. Gallup also estimated that managers accounted for at least 70% of the variance in employee-engagement scores across business units.
Gallup’s U.S. manager research reported that 35% of managers were engaged, 51% were not engaged, and 14% were actively disengaged. Gallup estimated that not-engaged and actively disengaged managers cost the U.S. economy $319 billion to $398 billion annually. The estimate is tied to the research’s publication-era context, so it should not be treated as a current cost estimate.
One employee-experience finding is especially relevant to retention decisions: 50% of employees reported having left a job to get away from their manager at some point in their career. That result does not identify every cause of turnover, but it shows why manager quality can be a practical productivity concern rather than only a leadership preference.
Engagement and well-being
Gallup’s global results for 2023 provide a newer comparison between managers and non-managers. Globally, 30% of managers were engaged compared with 18% of non-managers. Managers were also more likely to be thriving in life: 40% compared with 30% of non-managers. These are global comparisons for 2023, not U.S.-only measurements.
The well-being results also show that higher engagement does not mean managers experience less pressure across every measure. Daily stress affected 41% of managers and 40% of non-managers. Daily anger affected 24% of managers and 19% of non-managers, while daily sadness affected 24% of managers and 21% of non-managers. Daily loneliness affected 21% of managers and 20% of non-managers. Daily worry affected 39% of managers and 36% of non-managers.
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2024 Report reported that 57% of managers globally said it was a good time to find a job, compared with 52% of non-managers. At the same time, 56% of managers were looking to leave, compared with 50% of non-managers. For a manager productivity program, these figures point toward two simultaneous tasks: improving the work system and reducing the conditions that make capable managers consider leaving.
Gallup also reported that countries in its upper half for manager engagement were twice as likely to have engaged non-managers. This is an association at the country level, not a direct estimate of an individual manager’s effect. It nevertheless supports tracking manager engagement alongside team engagement rather than treating the manager role as an isolated productivity metric.
Workload, communication, and interruptions
Microsoft’s 2023 Work Trend Index survey found that 64% of knowledge workers struggled with having the time and energy to do their job. People who struggled with time and energy were 3.5 times more likely to also struggle with innovation and strategic thinking. For managers, the implication is that workload measurement should include protected thinking time, not only visible activity or completed communications.
The same survey found that 68% of people lacked enough uninterrupted focus time during the workday, while 62% struggled with spending too much time searching for information. Across Microsoft 365 apps in the 2023 analysis, employees spent 57% of their time communicating in meetings, email, and chat, compared with 43% creating in documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
The communication burden was concentrated among heavy users. The top 25% of email users spent 8.8 hours per week on email, and the top 25% of meeting users spent 7.5 hours per week in meetings. Those are weekly measures from the 2023 Work Trend Index survey, not universal averages for every worker.
Microsoft’s later telemetry adds a different kind of evidence. Its telemetry, ending February 15, 2025, found that high-volume users were interrupted every two minutes during core work hours, or 275 times per day on the source’s 24-hour-day measure. Because these figures are telemetry rather than survey responses, they use Microsoft’s stated tenant and user-volume definitions and should not be generalized to every workplace.
The same telemetry found that PowerPoint edits among meeting participants spiked 122% in the final 10 minutes before a meeting. Among the top 20% of users by meeting volume, 60% of meetings were unscheduled or ad hoc. Chats sent outside Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., were up 15% year over year. Together, these measures describe an operating pattern in which preparation, meetings, and communication extend into one another instead of forming clean work blocks. The source is Microsoft’s “Breaking down the infinite workday”.
Meeting friction and lost focus
Meeting volume alone does not show whether collaboration is useful. Microsoft’s 2023 survey found that 58% of people said virtual meetings made brainstorming difficult. Another 57% said it was difficult to catch up when joining a meeting late, and 56% said it was hard to summarize what happened in a meeting. Fifty-five percent said meeting next steps were unclear at the end.
People were in three times more Teams meetings and calls per week than in February 2020, a 192% increase. Yet only 35% said they would be missed in the majority of their meetings. These figures from Microsoft’s Work Trend Index suggest that managers need to evaluate meeting necessity, decision quality, and follow-through—not simply attendance.
Asana’s 2023 Anatomy of Work Index, based on a survey conducted in November 2022, measured the time cost of unnecessary meetings. Senior leaders spent 3.6 hours per week in unnecessary meetings, while knowledge workers spent 2.8 hours per week. The result is a practical comparison for diagnosing role-specific meeting load:
| Group | Unnecessary meeting time per week | Source period |
|---|---|---|
| Senior leaders | 3.6 hours | Asana survey, November 2022 |
| Knowledge workers | 2.8 hours | Asana survey, November 2022 |
Managers can use these measures to ask more precise questions: Was a meeting needed? Could the decision have been documented? Were the participants necessary? Were next steps assigned clearly enough that another meeting was not required? The statistics do not prescribe a single meeting policy, but they show why meeting design belongs in productivity work.
Trust as a productivity condition
Slack’s survey conducted from February 13 through March 6, 2023, found large self-reported differences between desk workers who felt trusted and those who did not. Trusted desk workers reported 2.1 times better focus and twice the productivity of desk workers who did not feel trusted. They also reported 4.3 times greater overall work satisfaction and were 1.3 times more likely to say they put in more effort.
More than 25% of surveyed desk workers said their employer did not trust them. Even among desk workers who did not feel trusted, 87% said they still met or exceeded manager expectations. That result matters for interpretation: perceived trust and performance expectations are not interchangeable. A worker can meet expectations while reporting a weaker experience of focus, productivity, satisfaction, or discretionary effort.
These figures are reported outcomes from Slack’s survey, not proof that trust alone caused each difference. The source is Slack’s “New research reveals trust is the key driver of productivity”. For decision-making guides, the useful management question is how trust is made observable: clear goals, appropriate autonomy, reliable feedback, and accountability based on outcomes rather than constant availability.
What early AI measurements show
Microsoft’s early Copilot-user research in 2023 reported several productivity outcomes and perceptions. Seventy percent of users said they were more productive, 71% said Copilot saved time on mundane tasks, and 68% said it improved their work quality. Eighty-six percent said Copilot made it easier to catch up on missed work. Users were 29% faster across a series of searching, writing, and summarizing tasks.
The reported results varied by use case. Copilot for Sales users reported saving an average of 90 minutes per week. Agents using Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service spent 12% less time resolving a case. These are reported outcomes from the early research, not guaranteed causal effects for every manager, team, or organization.
The AI results are most useful when paired with the workload findings above. If a team lacks focus time, spends heavily on communication, and struggles to find information, an assistant that helps with searching, summarizing, or routine work may address particular bottlenecks. But the research does not establish that AI automatically improves strategic thinking, meeting quality, or manager judgment. Those remain operating questions to measure separately.
For a manager productivity dashboard, the supplied research supports tracking several distinct layers: manager and team engagement; focus-time availability; meeting and communication load; interruption patterns; trust and satisfaction; and task-specific AI outcomes. Keeping these measures separate helps avoid treating activity as productivity and avoids presenting survey perceptions, descriptive associations, telemetry, and early-user research as if they were the same kind of evidence.