The human factor, a measurable performance lever

France at the bottom of the engagement table

Every year Gallup publishes the State of the Global Workplace report, the largest global survey of engagement at work. The 2026 edition, based on data collected throughout 2025, paints a harsh picture for France:

In France, 72% of employees are "not engaged": they do their job without putting in any particular energy. And one in five is actively disengaged.

This figure isn't an abstract statistic. It describes the state of the teams who carry the company's strategy to customers every day.

What engagement changes in results

The legitimate question is: does it show in the results? The most robust answer comes from Gallup's Q12 meta-analysis. Its 11th edition, published in 2024, compiles 736 studies covering 183,806 teams and more than 3.3 million employees, in 53 industries and 90 countries.

It compares teams in the top engagement quartile with those in the bottom quartile. The median differences are clear:

Source: Gallup, Q12 Meta-Analysis, 11th edition, 2024.

Other work, cited on our Method page, points the same way:

• +10 to +25% overall efficiency when people strategy and business strategy are aligned;
• 4 to 8% additional growth for companies that put people and customers at the centre of their model;
• +5% employee engagement can generate up to +1.3% customer satisfaction.

(Sources: Boston Consulting Group, Martin Newman, Deloitte, Fujitsu.)

These figures don't say that simply "feeling good" drives performance. They say that the coherence between the strategy and how teams experience it directly affects results.

Why people topics are handled separately

Financial and sales indicators are precise, tracked and discussed at board level. People topics are harder to measure, and therefore easier to postpone. They become visible when they turn into symptoms: turnover, absenteeism, conflict, declining service quality.

At that point, the symptom gets treated. The cause often lies in a gap between what is decided and what is lived:

• unclear priorities, or conflicting ones between departments;
• poorly defined roles, which create grey areas and friction;
• misunderstood decisions, applied without conviction;
• management lacking guidance, time or resources.

These are exactly the gaps that research on strategy execution highlights. See our article on strategic audits and invisible gaps.

The central role of management

Gallup has stressed for years that frontline managers play a decisive role in their team's engagement. That makes sense: they translate strategy into concrete priorities, give meaning to decisions, and create (or don't) the conditions for good work.

In practice, this means that an engagement plan that doesn't go through management is unlikely to have lasting effects. Training, equipping and aligning managers is often the most effective lever.

Connecting people to strategy

Treating the human factor as a performance lever means connecting it to the other dimensions of the company:

• strategy: is it understood and shared by those who execute it?
• organisation: does it let teams do their job well?
• management: does it provide clear, consistent guidance?
• customer experience: does it reflect the teams' engagement?

It is this cross-functional reading that reveals the levers that really work, rather than multiplying isolated initiatives.

The human factor isn't handled alongside the strategy. It is one of the conditions for its success.

A conviction, a method

At Vision Human Consulting, this conviction shapes the whole approach. The ODC method (Observe, Decode, Consolidate) analyses strategy, organisation and human dynamics together, to build concrete responses with clear objectives and tracking indicators.

Sources

• Gallup, State of the Global Workplace, country data: France, 2026 edition (2025 data).
• Gallup, Q12 Meta-Analysis, 11th edition, 2024.
• Method page figures: Boston Consulting Group, Martin Newman, Deloitte, Fujitsu.