Quick Summary: Virtual Team Building Statistics
| Metric | Latest Data | Source |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. workers who teleworked or worked from home for pay | 22.6% (March 2026) | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics |
| U.S. teleworkers, annual average | 35.4M (2025) | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics |
| Remote-capable U.S. employees working hybrid / exclusively remote / fully on-site | 52% / 26% / 22% (2026) | Gallup |
| Global employee engagement | 20% (2025 data, 2026 report) | Gallup |
| Global manager engagement | 22%, down from 31% in 2022 (2025) | Gallup |
| Engagement by work location: exclusively remote / hybrid / on-site remote-capable | 25% / 24% / 17% (2025) | Gallup |
| Daily loneliness among exclusively remote workers | 23% (2025) | Gallup |
| Rise in workday hours spent alone, remote-capable jobs vs non-remote jobs | 58% (2026) | Science (Emanuel et al.) |
| U.S. workers who report feeling lonely | 52% (2025) | The Cigna Group |
| Most common hybrid schedule | 3 office days a week, 39% of hybrid workers (2025) | Owl Labs |
Key Takeaways
- Distributed work has settled rather than reversed: 22.6% of U.S. workers still telework, and 78% of remote-capable employees are hybrid or fully remote in 2026.
- Global engagement fell to 20% in 2025, and the drop is driven by managers, whose engagement has fallen 9 points since 2022 to 22%.
- Employees who could work remotely but are required on-site are the least engaged group at 17% and the least likely to be thriving at 32%.
- A 2026 study of 588,322 U.S. workers found remote-capable jobs brought a 58% rise in hours spent alone and a 72% rise in the odds of a full day with no human contact.
- Loneliness is now close to universal across work arrangements: 23% of exclusively remote, 22% of hybrid, and 22% of on-site remote-capable workers felt lonely a lot of the previous day.
How distributed teams work in 2026
Return-to-office headlines have not changed the underlying numbers much. Official U.S. telework rates have held in a narrow band for over a year, hybrid remains the default for remote-capable roles, and even fully on-site employees increasingly work in teams spread across locations.
These figures set the baseline for why connection programs are no longer optional; see our broader remote work statistics for the full picture.
Stat 01
22.6%
of U.S. workers
More than 1 in 5 U.S. workers teleworked in March 2026
In March 2026, 22.6% of employed Americans teleworked or worked from home for pay. The rate has stayed between 21.5% and 23.0% over the past year, which points to a stable floor rather than a fading trend. Women (24.9%) and workers aged 25 to 54 (25.1%) telework at the highest rates.
↗ Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Telework rate by group, March 2026
24.9% employed women
20.5% employed men
25.1% workers aged 25 to 54
Stat 02
35.4M
U.S. teleworkers
Teleworkers split almost evenly between part-time and full-time remote
On average across 2025, 35,389,000 Americans teleworked or worked from home for pay. Of those, 53.1% teleworked some of their hours and 46.9% teleworked all of them, so roughly 16.6M people rarely share a physical workspace with colleagues at all. Full-time remote workers averaged 37.0 telework hours a week.
↗ Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025 Annual Averages
Telework intensity, 2025 annual average
Teleworked some hours
18.8M
53.1% of teleworkers, averaging 17.3 remote hours a week.
Teleworked all hours
16.6M
46.9% of teleworkers, averaging 37.0 remote hours a week.
Stat 03
52%
of remote-capable employees work hybrid
Hybrid remains the dominant model for remote-capable U.S. jobs
As of May 2026, Gallup’s Hybrid Work Indicator shows 52% of remote-capable U.S. employees working hybrid, 26% exclusively remote, and 22% fully on-site. The split has stayed within 2 points of these figures every quarter since late 2022. Remote-capable roles make up about half the U.S. workforce, and 6 in 10 of those employees say they want a hybrid arrangement.
↗ Source: Gallup, Hybrid Work Indicator
Work location of remote-capable U.S. employees, May 2026
Hybrid, 52%
Exclusively remote, 26%
Fully on-site, 22%
Stat 04
27%
of on-site workers have distributed teams
Even fully on-site employees now work in dispersed teams
The share of fully on-site, remote-capable employees who say their team is spread across different work locations doubled from 13% in 2023 to 27% in 2025. Being in the office no longer means being with your team. Hybrid workers themselves spend 46% of the workweek on-site, about 2.3 days, unchanged over the past year.
↗ Source: Gallup
On-site employees whose team is spread across locations
Stat 05
39%
of hybrid workers are on a 3-day office schedule
3 days in the office is the most common hybrid arrangement
Owl Labs’ 2025 survey of 2,000 U.S. knowledge workers found 3 office days a week is the most prevalent hybrid model at 39%. Preferences are shifting toward more office time: 25% would prefer full-time in-office, 21% want 4 days, and 21% want 3 days. Employees say they feel most productive on-site when managing others (58%), meeting new people (56%), and collaborating (55%).
↗ Source: Owl Labs, State of Hybrid Work 2025
Preferred number of office days, 2025
The engagement problem virtual team building is trying to solve
Connection programs only make sense against the engagement baseline, and that baseline is the worst Gallup has recorded in years.
Global engagement has now fallen 2 years in a row, the drop is concentrated among managers, and the employees who could work remotely but are required on-site are the least engaged of any group. For the wider set of workforce metrics behind these numbers, see our 2026 HR statistics report.
Stat 06
20%
of employees worldwide are engaged
Global engagement has fallen 2 years in a row for the first time
Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report puts global engagement at 20% for 2025, down from a peak of 23% in 2022. Another 64% of employees are not engaged and 16% are actively disengaged. No region increased its engagement rate during the year, and each percentage point represents roughly 21M workers.
↗ Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026
Global employee engagement, 2022 to 2025
2022, 23%
2023, 23%
2024, 21%
2025, 20%
Stat 07
$10T
lost productivity from low engagement
Disengagement costs the world economy about 9% of GDP
Gallup estimates that low engagement cost the global economy roughly $10 trillion in lost productivity in the most recent year measured, equal to about 9% of global GDP. That figure is up from the $8.9 trillion estimate in the 2024 report. The 3-point slide since 2022 alone represents tens of millions of workers who have stopped contributing at full effort.
↗ Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026
Scale of the engagement gap
$10T
Annual lost productivity
9%
Share of global GDP
21M
Workers per engagement point
3 pts
Decline since 2022 peak
Stat 08
22%
of managers are engaged
Manager engagement has dropped 9 points since 2022
Global manager engagement fell from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, including a 5-point drop in a single year, the largest Gallup has recorded. Managers have lost the engagement premium they once held over individual contributors, which matters because Gallup attributes at least 70% of the variance in team engagement to the manager. In best-practice organizations, 79% of managers are engaged.
↗ Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026
Manager engagement
Stat 09
17%
engagement among on-site remote-capable workers
Employees forced on-site are now the least engaged group
Gallup’s 2025 data shows exclusively remote employees still lead on engagement at 25%, with hybrid close behind at 24%. Remote-capable employees required to work fully on-site trail at 17%, below even workers whose jobs cannot be done remotely (18%). Note that remote engagement fell from 31% in the prior year’s report, so older figures citing 31% are out of date.
↗ Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026
Engagement by work location, global 2025
Stat 10
31%
of U.S. employees engaged
More U.S. workers are now struggling than thriving
U.S. engagement held at a decade-low 31% through 2025. In Gallup’s Q4 2025 survey, 49% of U.S. workers were classified as struggling in their lives and 46% as thriving, the first time struggling has outnumbered thriving since tracking began. Only 28% said it was a good time to find a quality job, down from 70% in mid-2022.
↗ Source: Gallup
U.S. worker life evaluation, Q4 2025
Thriving
46%
Down from the low-to-mid 50s in 2022 and 2023.
Struggling
49%
First time struggling has exceeded thriving on record.
Loneliness and isolation in distributed teams
The strongest evidence on remote isolation arrived in June 2026, when a study of 588,322 U.S. workers published in Science quantified how much more time remote-capable workers now spend alone.
Gallup’s 2026 data adds a twist: loneliness among fully remote workers has eased, and it now sits at roughly the same level as hybrid and on-site staff. Loneliness is a cost problem as well as a wellbeing one, as lonely workers put in less effort and are more likely to leave, which feeds directly into the true cost of employee turnover.
Stat 11
58%
rise in workday hours spent alone
Remote-capable jobs brought a 58% rise in time spent alone
A June 2026 Science paper drew on 5 national surveys covering 588,322 U.S. workers from 2011 to 2024 and compared remote-capable occupations with those that cannot be done remotely. Workers in remote-capable jobs saw a 58% rise in hours spent alone during the workday, about 1.1 extra waking hours a day, and a 72% rise in the odds of a full day with no human contact. The authors estimate remote work explains roughly a third of the increase in isolation and mental distress since 2019.
↗ Source: Science, Emanuel et al. 2026
Remote-capable vs non-remote occupations, post-pandemic
588,322
U.S. workers in the sample
+1.1 hrs
Extra waking hours alone daily
+72%
Odds of no contact all day
~33%
Share of distress rise explained
Stat 12
23%
of fully remote workers felt lonely yesterday
Loneliness is now nearly equal across work arrangements
In Gallup’s 2025 data, 23% of exclusively remote employees reported a lot of loneliness the previous day, down from 27% in the prior year’s report. Hybrid and on-site remote-capable workers both sit at 22%, and non-remote-capable on-site workers at 21%. The gap that once made loneliness a remote-only problem has closed to 2 points.
↗ Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026
Daily loneliness by work location, global 2025
Stat 13
32%
–45%
–45%
thriving, by work location
Remote and hybrid workers are 13 points more likely to be thriving
Gallup’s 2026 report shows 45% of exclusively remote and 45% of hybrid employees thriving in their overall lives, against 32% of remote-capable employees required to work on-site. Remote thriving jumped 9 points year on year while the on-site remote-capable group fell 10 points. Fully remote and hybrid workers do report more daily stress (46% each) than on-site workers (39%).
↗ Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026
Life evaluation by work location, global 2025
On-site, remote-capable
32%
Down from 42% in the prior report and below the 34% global average.
Exclusively remote and hybrid
45%
Remote rose from 36% and hybrid from 42% in the prior report.
The gap reflects denied flexibility: workers who know their job could be remote but are required on-site score lowest on both engagement and life evaluation.
Stat 14
22%
of employees worldwide felt lonely yesterday
Stress remains the most common negative emotion at work
Across Gallup’s 2025 global sample, 40% of employees experienced a lot of stress the previous day, 23% sadness, 22% loneliness, and 22% anger. Leaders report higher levels of all 4 than individual contributors, including 31% daily loneliness. Gallup finds overall engagement has a stronger effect on loneliness than any single workplace factor it tracks.
↗ Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026
Employees experiencing each emotion a lot the previous day
Experienced a lot
Did not
Stat 15
52%
of U.S. workers feel lonely
Lonely workers are less willing to go the extra mile
The Cigna Group’s Loneliness in America 2025 study, based on a survey of 7,500 U.S. adults, classifies 52% of workers as lonely. Workers who are not lonely are more likely to say they are willing to work harder to help their company succeed, 74% versus 63% among lonely workers. Gen Z and millennials report higher loneliness than older generations despite being the most digitally connected.
↗ Source: The Cigna Group, Loneliness in America 2025
Loneliness and discretionary effort, 2025
74% of non-lonely workers will work harder
63% of lonely workers say the same
57% of all U.S. adults are lonely
Connection, coordination, and trust in hybrid teams
Gallup’s 2026 hybrid research points to a simple pattern: the teams that struggle are not the ones furthest apart, they are the ones that never agreed on how to work together.
Nearly half of hybrid teams have no collaboration plan, most employees had no say in their hybrid policy, and barely half of managers fully trust remote staff to be productive. Gallup’s strategic guide for managing hybrid and remote teams lays out the full findings; the numbers below are the ones that matter most for anyone designing connection programs.
Stat 16
48%
of hybrid workers have no team collaboration plan
Teams with a hybrid collaboration plan are 66% more likely to be engaged
Nearly half of hybrid workers, 48%, say their team has never discussed a formal or informal plan for collaborating across locations. Where a plan exists, employees are 66% more likely to be engaged, 29% less likely to be burned out, and 2.2 times as likely to say the hybrid policy has an extremely positive effect on collaboration. Managers feel the gap too: 48% name communication and 44% name collaboration as their top hybrid challenge.
↗ Source: Gallup
Effect of having a team collaboration plan
66% more likely to be engaged
29% less likely to be burned out
2.2x as likely to rate policy positively
Stat 17
11%
of employees set hybrid policy as a team
Team-set hybrid schedules are rated fair by 90% of employees
Only 11% of hybrid employees say their work team decided its hybrid policy together, compared with 31% set by leadership, 24% by the direct manager, and 34% left entirely to the individual. Fairness tracks who decides: 90% call a team-set policy fair, against 73% for a leadership mandate. Team-set policies also score highest for positive impact on collaboration at 55%, versus 41% for leadership-set policies.
↗ Source: Gallup
Share who say the hybrid policy is fair, by decision-maker
Leadership decides
73%
The most common approach, used for 31% of employees.
Team decides together
90%
The least common approach, used for 11% of employees.
Stat 18
54%
of managers fully trust remote staff to be productive
Trust is missing on both sides of the remote relationship
Only 54% of managers who supervise remote employees strongly agree they trust their teams to be productive when working remotely, and only 57% of employees strongly agree they feel trusted by their manager. Gallup finds that consistent communication, clear expectations, accountability for outcomes, and equal access to feedback can raise trust by nearly 30 percentage points. Employees with fully self-determined schedules are 76% more likely to name burnout as their biggest challenge, so autonomy without team norms carries its own cost.
↗ Source: Gallup
The remote trust gap
54%
Managers strongly trust remote teams
57%
Employees strongly feel trusted
~30 pts
Trust gain from management basics
Stat 19
37%
of exclusively remote U.S. employees are engaged
In the U.S., remote and hybrid workers out-engage on-site peers by 5 to 9 points
Gallup’s Q2 2026 U.S. data shows 37% of exclusively remote employees engaged, 34% of hybrid, 29% of remote-capable on-site, and 28% of non-remote-capable on-site workers, against a national average of 31%. Thriving follows a similar order: 54% hybrid, 52% remote, 49% and 46% for the 2 on-site groups. Hybrid engagement has drifted down from 41% in 2019 and 37% in mid-2025, which is why coordination structure now matters more than location.
↗ Source: Gallup
U.S. engagement by work location, Q2 2026
Managers are the lever that moves team engagement
Every Gallup dataset in this post points back to the same variable. Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement, yet fewer than half of the world’s managers have received any management training, and the ones who have not are also the ones carrying the largest engagement declines.
The evidence below suggests that a connection program will underperform if the managers running it are disengaged themselves, which also shows up in the employee retention metrics HR teams track.
Stat 20
44%
of managers have received management training
Best-practice manager training lifts performance metrics by 20% to 28%
Only 44% of managers worldwide say they have received any management training. Gallup’s 2025 report found that even basic training cuts active disengagement among managers roughly in half, and managers who complete best-practice coaching programs see management performance metrics improve by 20% to 28%. Participants in those programs reported up to 22% higher engagement than non-participants.
↗ Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2025
What manager training changes
44%
Managers ever trained
~50%
Cut in active disengagement
20–28%
Performance metric improvement
22%
Higher engagement for participants
Stat 21
50%
of managers thrive with training plus encouragement
Manager development nearly doubles manager thriving
Gallup finds 28% of managers with no employer-provided training are thriving in life. That rises to 34% with training, and to 50% when a manager has both training and someone at work actively encouraging their development. Gallup calls manager development one of the most effective wellbeing initiatives an employer can fund, because manager wellbeing carries through to their teams.
↗ Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2025
Share of managers thriving, by development support
Thriving
Not thriving
Stat 22
22%
of employees got meaningful feedback last week
Fewer than 1 in 4 employees get the weekly contact Gallup recommends
Only 22% of U.S. employees strongly agree they received meaningful feedback in the past week, and only 27% strongly agree their supervisor keeps them informed about what is happening in the organization. Gallup’s standard for remote and hybrid teams is one meaningful conversation per manager and direct report every week. In distributed teams these gaps widen because the informal moments that used to fill them do not happen on their own.
↗ Source: Gallup
Employees who strongly agree, 2026
Stat 23
47%
less likely to be job hunting when engaged
Engaged employees are 69% less likely to burn out
Gallup’s Q3 2026 engagement indicator shows that, compared with peers who are not engaged, engaged employees are 69% less likely to experience burnout, 47% less likely to be job hunting, and 69% more likely to be thriving in life. For distributed teams, this is the mechanism that connects connection programs to retention: engagement, not location, predicts who stays.
↗ Source: Gallup, Employee Engagement Indicator
Engaged vs not engaged employees, 2026
-69%
Likelihood of burnout
-47%
Likelihood of job hunting
+69%
Likelihood of thriving
Flexibility, retention, and the business case for connection
The retention data in 2025 and 2026 shows two things at once. Remote workers are the most engaged group and the most likely to be job hunting, and taking flexibility away pushes most of them toward the exit.
The variable that separates a remote worker who stays from one who leaves is whether they are both engaged and thriving, which is exactly what connection programs and good management are meant to produce. This applies whether a team sits in one country or is hired across borders through an employer of record.
Stat 24
57%
of fully remote workers are job hunting
Engagement plus wellbeing cuts remote job hunting by 19 points
Globally, 57% of fully remote employees are actively looking or passively watching for a new job, the highest of any work arrangement. Among engaged remote workers the figure drops to 47%, and among those who are both engaged and thriving it falls to 38%. Gallup’s conclusion is that remote engagement alone does not retain people; engagement and wellbeing together do.
↗ Source: Gallup, The Remote Work Paradox
Fully remote workers looking for a new job, 2025
Stat 25
6 in 10
remote workers would leave if flexibility ended
Removing remote flexibility puts 60% of remote staff at flight risk
Gallup finds 6 in 10 exclusively remote employees say they would be extremely likely to look for a new job if their employer removed remote flexibility. Only 54% of managers strongly agree they trust remote staff to be productive, which is often what drives mandates in the first place. Gallup’s guidance is to treat flexibility as part of the employee value proposition rather than a perk, and to fix trust through clear expectations instead of attendance rules.
↗ Source: Gallup
Exclusively remote employees, 2026
6 in 10 extremely likely to job hunt if flexibility removed
6 in 10 remote-capable employees prefer hybrid
<10% prefer fully on-site work
Stat 26
40%
of knowledge workers would job hunt if flexibility ended
Flexible hours matter to 83% of employees
In Owl Labs’ 2025 survey of U.S. knowledge workers, 40% said they would start looking for a new job and 5% would quit outright if their employer removed flexibility. Flexible hours matter to 83% of respondents, and 37% would turn down a role that did not offer them. Managers rated their teams 62% more productive in hybrid or remote setups, down from 79% a year earlier, which suggests the productivity argument is softening even as employee demand holds.
↗ Source: Owl Labs, State of Hybrid Work 2025
Response to losing flexibility, 2025
40%
Would start job hunting
5%
Would quit immediately
37%
Would decline job without flexibility
83%
Say flexible hours matter
Stat 27
34%
of hybrid U.S. employees engaged, May 2026
Hybrid engagement has slipped 7 points since 2019
Gallup’s tracking of U.S. hybrid employees shows engagement falling from 41% in January 2019 to 34% in May 2026, with thriving down from 65% in 2021 to 54%. Hybrid still outperforms on-site work, but the flexibility dividend is shrinking as hybrid becomes the default rather than a benefit. Gallup attributes the remaining gap between strong and weak hybrid teams to structure and management, not the schedule itself.
↗ Source: Gallup
U.S. hybrid employee engagement, 2019 to 2026
2019, 41%
2022, 37%
2024, 35%
May 2026, 34%
Conclusion
The 2025 and 2026 data settles the question of whether distributed work is going away: it is not, with 22.6% of U.S. workers teleworking and 78% of remote-capable employees hybrid or fully remote. What has changed is the shape of the problem.
Loneliness is no longer a remote-only issue, it now sits at 22% to 23% across every work arrangement, while engagement has fallen to 20% globally and the sharpest decline is among the managers expected to hold teams together.
The strongest results in this dataset come not from location but from structure: teams with a collaboration plan are 66% more likely to be engaged, team-set hybrid norms are rated fair by 90% of employees, and trained managers lift performance metrics by 20% to 28%. For HR leaders, the practical reading is that virtual team building works as part of a system built on manager capability, agreed team norms, and weekly contact, and rarely as a standalone event.
