A mid-year Glassdoor report shows senior leadership ratings at their lowest since 2017, with employees increasingly using words like “misalignment” and “disconnect” in reviews. The drop tracks a hiring recession marked by ongoing layoffs, tightening return-to-
For the third year in a row. employees have been bracing for another shift in how work will look—and this time. it’s not just about pay or process. In Glassdoor’s mid-year look at workplace and job market trends it predicted at the end of 2025. the signal is blunt: workers say senior leaders have stopped earning their confidence.
Leaders, the report finds, are misaligned, disconnected, distrusted, hypocritical, and bad communicators. That isn’t a vague sentiment. Glassdoor’s Economic Research shows average senior leadership ratings in its reviews fell below 3.5—“the lowest since 2017.”
The breakdown shows up in how often specific words appear when employees mention leadership. From 2024 to 2025, employee satisfaction already fell, and those rates have plummeted further. In reviews that mentioned leadership. year-over-year keyword prevalence shifted sharply: “misalignment” jumped 95%. “disconnect” rose 52%. “distrust” increased 18%. “hypocrisy” edged up 4%. while “miscommunication” decreased 9%.
The hiring recession has been the backdrop, but the report’s timeline helps explain why anxiety has hardened into distrust.
WARN notices put the layoffs front and center. Under the U.S. WARN Act, employers must notify employees, local governments, and state agencies 60 days before a mass layoff or closing. Glassdoor’s analysis of those notices shows that small layoffs made up 50% of filings in 2026. That share is slightly lower than in 2023 to 2025, but higher than in prior years.
Employees don’t just worry about headlines. The report says anxiety about layoffs and job security is skyrocketing. Mentions of insecurity rose 63% in 2026, while explicit mentions of layoffs increased 29%. And even workers who have “survived layoffs” aren’t left unscarred; the report says layoffs continue to affect workplace culture for multiple years.
Then came the daily friction of returning to the office.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of people primarily working remotely tripled, according to the U.S. Census. Remote or hybrid working has since become more normalized—but in more recent months. many companies have moved toward strict return-to-office policies. Employees are left with a difficult tradeoff. Glassdoor says: maintain remote and hybrid flexibility. or pursue faster career growth and return to the office.
The numbers suggest the pressure is working. Work-from-home rates declined slowly as employers pushed employees back and limited remote options. The percentage of full-time work days spent working from home fell from 27.2% in 2025 to 25.7% in 2026. Fully remote job counts dropped from 12.5% in 2025 to 11.1% in 2026. Hybrid work was steadier, moving only slightly from 27.1% in 2025 to 26.8% in 2026.
That shift isn’t only about schedule. Employee satisfaction is also falling among the people most directly affected. Remote workers report lower worklife balance ratings than hybrid workers, even as hybrid remains comparatively stable.
At the same time, AI has become a fresh source of uncertainty—and a new point of conflict between what leaders demand and what employees believe leaders are willing to do.
From 2022 to 2025, Glassdoor says employee satisfaction in occupations highly exposed to AI declined only slightly. While the report predicted the decline would continue, the decrease has been more rapid than anticipated. The impact isn’t confined to roles at risk of direct replacement; AI concerns spread across broader workplace discussions.
In reviews that mention AI-related keywords, the report finds the volume has jumped more than tripled—240%. AI is mentioned more than other pressing issues, such as inflation.
Employees say they’re caught in a contradiction: they are concerned about leaders demanding the use of AI while. at the same time. leaders use AI as an excuse for layoffs. The report captures a shift in tone across the two years it compares. In 2025, discussions on AI were more optimistic, with 55% positive sentiment versus 41% negative. In 2026, that flipped decisively: sentiment was 53% negative and 43% positive.
The thread running through all of it is simple in structure, even if it’s hard to live with: layoffs loom, office rules tighten, and AI arrives with demands that workers associate with job risk and broken trust.
Glassdoor senior leadership ratings employee satisfaction layoffs WARN Act return-to-office remote work hybrid work AI workplace sentiment misalignment disconnect job security