Glassdoor Mid-Year Report Finds Major Rift Between Employees and Senior Leadership

Glassdoor, the leading online anonymous employee review and career platform, recently followed up on the workplace and labor market trend predictions it published at the end of 2025. This week, the platform’s research team released a mid-year analysis that uncovered a stark, growing disconnect between rank-and-file employees and top company leadership. Below are the report’s core key takeaways:

Senior Leadership Is Widely Seen As Misaligned, Out of Touch, Distrusted, Hypocritical, and Poor Communicators

Glassdoor Economic Research data shows employee satisfaction already sat at low levels between 2024 and 2025, and satisfaction scores have only plummeted further in 2026. The average rating for senior leadership across all Glassdoor reviews has now fallen below 3.5 out of 5, marking the lowest reading recorded since 2017.

In reviews that specifically mention company leadership, year-over-year shifts in negative keyword prevalence tell a clear story of growing discontent: mentions of "misalignment" rose 95%, "disconnect" rose 52%, "distrust" rose 18%, and "hypocrisy" rose 4%. The only negative keyword that saw a small decline was "miscommunication," which dropped 9% — a shift that does little to offset the broader trend: senior leaders have now lost the confidence of most of their workforces. Here’s why that shift is happening.

Layoffs Have Become a Constant, Unending Norm for Workers

For the report, Glassdoor analyzed filings under the U.S. WARN Act, a federal law that requires employers to give 60 days advance notice to employees, local governments, and state agencies ahead of any mass layoff or permanent facility closure. The analysis found that small, rolling layoffs made up 50% of all WARN filings in 2026. That share is slightly lower than the rate recorded between 2023 and 2025, but still significantly higher than the average seen in years before 2023.