10 Statistics to Help You Make the Case for Human Skills

Every week, the Connection Heroes team speaks with people leaders who care deeply about engagement and helping their teams feel genuinely connected at work. They can see the difference that trust and human connection make to morale, collaboration and performance. 

But we also speak with many People Leaders who don’t get the support they need to make positive change – they ask us for credible evidence to help them get support from senior decision-makers, who still believe technical skills matter more than human skills.

If that sounds familiar, here are ten data points (mix of global, UK and US) that can help you build the case for investing in human skills for your leaders, managers and teams.

  1. Low employee engagement represents an annual productivity opportunity cost of about $8.9 trillion, roughly 9% of global GDP (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace, 2025).
  2. Global employee engagement fell to 21% in 2024, down from 23% the previous year (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace, 2025).
  3. Managers account for around 70% of the variance in team engagement outcomes (Gallup workplace research, 2024).
  4. Less than half of global managers say they have received formal management training (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace, 2025).
  5. Around 70% of HR leaders say their leadership development programmes are not preparing managers for future needs (Gartner HR survey, 2025).
  6. 81% of HR managers believe employees lack the behavioural skills needed to succeed in management roles (People Management, 2025).
  7. Around 91% of learning professionals say human skills are increasingly important (LinkedIn, Workplace Learning Report, 2025).
  8. More than one in three UK workers say they sometimes or often feel lonely at work (CIPD, Good Work Index, 2025).
  9. Workplace loneliness has nearly doubled since 2024, with 45% of employees saying they feel isolated or alone at least sometimes in the United States (KPMG, Friends at Work 2.0, 2025).
  10. About half of employees in the United States say technology can create a false sense of connection that replaces deeper interaction (KPMG, Friends at Work 2.0, 2025).

Pick the ones you need and let us know how you get on! 

And if you’re looking for a starting point, the two workshops that have had most bookings so far this year are Connect with Candour (to help managers give better feedback and have braver conversations) and Collaboration Unlocked (to break down silos and improve collaboration between teams).