Employee engagement in the U.S. is stuck. Gallup’s mid-2025 data shows that only about 32% of employees are truly emotionally engaged at work, while many feel detached and are quietly looking elsewhere.

So, what’s missing — and more importantly, what can you, as a small business leader, do about it? Gallup uncovered four core themes in employee feedback, all of which FIREPOWER Teams is built to address. Let’s dig in.

Four Key Disconnects in the Workplace

Gallup asked workers: “What’s missing from your current work experience that would make you feel more connected to your employer?” Their responses were grouped around four main areas:

1. Organizational Culture

What Employees Are Missing: Belonging, autonomy, wellbeing, values. Many workplaces feel isolated or impersonal. This is especially true for Gen Z and remote workers.

Why It Matters: Culture = the soil in which engagement either grows or withers. If people don’t feel they belong or their values don’t align with what’s happening day-to-day, they’ll drift away.

2. Leadership Transparency

What Employees Are Missing: Clear communication, stable employment, strong strategic vision, leader visibility, and active involvement.

Why It Matters: When leadership is opaque, people fill in the gaps with assumptions, often negative ones. Trust erodes, and engagement drops.

3. Resource Investment

What Employees Are Missing: Fair compensation, workable benefits, proper tools, sufficient personnel, and effective systems.

Why It Matters: If people don’t have what they need to do their job well, it adds stress, frustration, and a sense that “leadership doesn’t care.”

4. Performance Management

What Employees Are Missing: Regular feedback, recognition, development, clear expectations, and accountability.

Why It Matters: Without feedback and a sense of progress, people feel invisible or stuck. Recognition is fuel. Expectations + accountability are the map.

How FIREPOWER Teams Solve The Issues

The FIREPOWER mission is to take small businesses from owner-driven to team-driven and talent-optimized. This structure makes your business more scalable, more human, and a place where the team feels seen, heard, and empowered to contribute.

The FIREPOWER Approach To The Four Disconnects:

1. Culture: Build Belonging, Autonomy, Wellbeing

• FIREPOWER helps you define Unique Contributor Roles (UCRs), so every person knows not just what to do, but why their work matters and how to make their best contributions.
• Shared routines and regular feedback ensure remote or hybrid teams feel connected, not isolated.
• Values are clarified, reinforced, and reflected in hiring, leadership, and recognition.

2. Transparency: Communicate with Clarity & Intent

• Owners and leaders are coached to articulate their vision clearly – what the company is aiming for, where you’re going and why, and who will get you there.
• Feedback flows both ways: leadership listens, adjusts, and creates visible decision-making processes.

3. Investment: Equip and Support Your Team Well

• FIREPOWER audits your resources (people, tools, processes) to identify performance gaps.
• We align compensation and non-financial benefits with what people need to thrive and prevent burnout through sustainable workload planning.

4. Performance Management: Feedback, Recognition, Growth

• We help leaders replace stale annual reviews with consistent coaching and engagement rhythms.
• Clearly defined expectations, accountability structures, and career paths give employees a sense of progress and purpose.

Why This Matters – Especially for Small Businesses

Small business owners often wear many hats. It’s tempting to let the people issues slide while you’re busy delivering services or products. But in today’s environment:

• Disconnected employees cost more than you think (Gallup estimates ~$2 trillion in lost productivity in the U.S.).
• Turnover, attrition, and disengagement tend to multiply – what starts as a single person’s low morale can spread.
• Your ability to scale depends on building structures (culture, clear roles, leadership) that don’t rely on you being everywhere all the time.

A Roadmap: Steps You Can Take Now

Here are steps you can begin today (or this week) to close the engagement gaps and strengthen your business:

1. Do a mini audit with your team: ask what they miss, what’s draining them, and what would help them feel more connected. Use Gallup’s four themes as lenses.
2. Clarify Roles & Purpose: ensure everyone knows their Unique Contributor Role and how it ties to the bigger picture.
3. Improve Communication Cadence: start regular updates, decision sharing, and ask for feedback.
4. Invest in Tools & Resources: where there are bottlenecks, too few people, or outdated systems, prioritize fixing those.
5. Switch Up Performance Feedback: set up more frequent check-ins, spotlight wins, and plan for growth together.

Turn Engagement Into Your Competitive Advantage

At FIREPOWER Teams, we believe authentic engagement is your competitive edge. When your team is fully connected, you get improved retention, better outcomes, more sustainable growth, and a business that is less dependent on you to micromanage every detail.

If you’re ready to close the gap between where your business is now and a place where your team is inspired, committed, and functioning as growth contributors, that’s where we come in.

Together, let’s build the kind of culture, leadership, and systems that make people want to stay.

Schedule your complimentary, confidential exit readiness conversation with Maria Forbes today!

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Works Cited

• Gallup. Anemic Employee Engagement Points to Leadership Challenges. August 2025. Link.

• FIREPOWER Teams. Our Approach: From Owner-Driven to Talent-Optimized. https://firepowerteams.com.

• FIREPOWER Teams. Services Overview. https://firepowerteams.com.