The employee-employer power balance has shifted firmly to the employer, according to Glassdoor\u2019s 2026 Worklife Trends report \u2014 and it has prompted employees to reexamine their engagement in turn.<\/p>\n
That power isn\u2019t necessarily exercised in loud or expansive moves but in quiet, consistent changes, the report showed. For example, employers are turning toward smaller layoffs of 50 people or less, with 51% of all layoffs in 2025 fitting that description, Glassdoor said, and doing so over several waves rather than all at once.<\/p>\n
Notably, 50 people is the cut-off for the federal WARN Act to require notice, though some states have stricter requirements. These serialized \u201cforever layoffs,\u201d as Glassdoor described them, are a quieter way to cut jobs than the mass layoffs that tend to dent Glassdoor reviews for the long-term, though employers are not escaping the consequences of this behavior entirely, the report noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cRolling layoffs may give companies a way to reduce headcount without making headlines, but they create cultures of anxiety, insecurity and resentment at companies,\u201d Glassdoor said in its post.<\/p>\n
Layoff anxiety was already high at the beginning of the year, other surveys have shown \u2014 and since then, 78% of U.S.-based HR leaders told Careerminds that they had conducted multiple rounds of layoffs in the past year.<\/p>\n
Pressure to return to the office has also ramped up \u2014 though not necessarily through highly publicized RTO mandates, Glassdoor said, since actual compliance with such mandates varies heavily.<\/p>\n
Instead, workers are noticing that those who go to the office tend to be prioritized for promotions and opportunities, leading to declining satisfaction for remote and hybrid employees, Glassdoor said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2026 and moving forward, remote and hybrid work aren\u2019t going to disappear, but workers will be pressured to make more explicit trade-offs between flexibility and career advancement,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n
These trends, among others, have emphasized the growing employee-leader disconnect, Glassdoor reviews showed. Words like \u201cdisconnect,\u201d \u201cmisaligned,\u201d \u201cmiscommunication,\u201d \u201chypocrisy\u201d and \u201cdistrust\u201d have all risen in worker reviews, the company said. \u201cMisaligned,\u201d in particular, shot up 149% in the past year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe twin forces of quickly-changing market conditions and declining worker power in the labor market will drive leaders to keep making big strategic moves while workers suffer from burnout and job insecurity,\u201d Glassdoor said. \u201cThis is a recipe for decaying trust.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other reports have shown a disconnect, as well, in how managers are perceived by both themselves and by their direct reports. While 59% of managers surveyed by the American Management Association said their engagement increased in the past year, 80% of workers said their managers\u2019 engagement stagnated or even declined.<\/p>\n
In other words, managers think they are stepping up, but workers don\u2019t see it, AMA\u2019s CEO said in a statement.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The employee-employer power balance has shifted firmly to the employer, according to Glassdoor\u2019s 2026 Worklife Trends report \u2014 and it has prompted employees to reexamine their engagement in turn. That power isn\u2019t necessarily exercised in loud or expansive moves but in quiet, consistent changes, the report showed. For example, employers are turning toward smaller layoffs […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2866,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864\/revisions\/2866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talentcentralhr.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}