7 Reasons Why Your Staff Aren’t Disengaged — They’re Disappointed 

“Low engagement” isn’t about laziness or lack of motivation. 

It’s more likely to be about disappointment. 

We love to dress disengagement up as an HR metric: scores, percentages, dashboards. But behind every low score is a story of broken trust. It’s not that your team members don’t care; that’s not why they’re disengaging.  Once upon a time, they probably did care, but their efforts were met with silence bureaucracy, or tokenistic gestures. 

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report shows that around the world, only 23% of employees are engaged (Gallup, 2023). In Australia and New Zealand, the picture isn’t much better, engagement sits at around 20%. Yet there has been years of surveys, initiatives, and leadership training and disengagement remains high.  

So, if effort isn’t the issue, what is? 

Let’s name the elephant in the room: disappointment. 

So, here’s what we know: 

• “Low engagement” is a symptom. Disappointment is the cause. 

• Employees disengage when promises, (development, recognition, support) aren’t delivered. 

• HR professionals often inherit the “fix engagement” problem without resources or authority. 

• Disappointment looks like disengagement.  This just causes misdiagnosis and wasted solutions. 

• Building trust is the cure, not another survey or program. 

• Small, credible actions rebuild trust better than pretentious initiatives. 

• HR leaders should be empowered to reframe the narrative. Instead of being pressured to blame staff to holding systems accountable. 

2. Disappointment in Action — Case Examples

Let’s bring this down to the ground with some familiar workplace scenarios. 

Case 1: The Development Mirage 
An Australian financial services firm promised structured career development during recruitment. Staff were told they’d have access to mentoring and clear pathways within two years. Three years later, workloads had increased but no development programs materialised. Exit interviews revealed the main reason for leaving wasn’t pay, it was broken promises. 

Case 2: The Flexibility Guilt Trip 
During the pandemic, many organisations proudly announced flexible work. Yet when one HR Business Partner in a regional council asked to work from home two days per week, her manager subtly questioned her commitment. While flexibility was technically available, the guilt attached to using it eroded trust. Engagement scores later dipped, but the survey report blamed “staff resilience,” not leadership inconsistency. 

Case 3: Recognition Reserved for Favourites 
In a mid-sized not-for-profit, leadership often praised “star performers” in large meetings. But the same names kept coming up, usually those in more visible roles. Support staff, admin teams, and quiet contributors received little recognition. Within two years, turnover doubled in the “unseen” teams, while leadership insisted on “new recognition programs.” In reality, people didn’t want to stand around, with token catering, being clappy-clappy to the same people, they wanted fairness. 

These aren’t stories of laziness. They’re stories of disappointment. 

3. The Psychology of Disappointment at Work 

Disappointment is a powerful demotivator. Studies in organisational psychology show that when expectations are consistently unmet, people adopt self-protective behaviours (APA, 2022). At work, that looks like withdrawal, reduced effort, or “quiet quitting.” 

Key insights: 

• Disappointment is cumulative. One broken promise might be forgiven; repeated ones compound into distrust. 

• Disappointment rewires effort. Staff learn not to “overinvest” because they don’t believe the return is real. 

• Disappointment is contagious. Cynicism spreads faster than enthusiasm, especially in under-resourced teams. 

For most HR Managers, this means that by the time “engagement” reaches their desk, the disappointment has already hardened into withdrawal. 

4. Why HR Gets Stuck with the Problem

The HR team are often tasked with fixing “engagement” without the authority to address its primary causes. 

Typically, leadership positions demand an engagement uplift. The budget or time for genuine structural change is non-existent. Instead, you’re resourced to run surveys, roll out workshops, or trial new apps. Meanwhile, the deeper issues (inequitable recognition, broken career pathways, toxic leadership behaviours), continue to be ignored. 

This cycle is frustrating and more importantly, it damages HR’s credibility. Staff see HR launching initiatives that don’t fix the real issues or see the real issues being ignored. Leadership pats itself on the back for “trying.” But no one names can honestly identify that the true issue is broken trust. 

5. Reframing the Narrative

So how do you reframe the conversation? Instead of accepting “low engagement” as a performance issue, you can position it as evidence of organisational disappointment. 

Reframe Example 1: 
Old framing: “Staff lack motivation.” 
New framing: “Staff once cared, now their disappointment shows unmet expectations.” 

Reframe Example 2: 
Old framing: “We need a new engagement program.” 
New framing: “We need to repair trust by delivering on promises already made.” 

Reframe Example 3: 
Old framing: “Let’s run another survey.” 
New framing: “Let’s explore and investigate accountability conversations with leaders who set expectations and didn’t meet them.” 

This reframe moves the responsibility from employees to leadership systems. It challenges leaders to look in the mirror instead of blaming the workforce. 

6. Building Trust with Credibility and Small Wins 

For some HR Managers, who are overloaded and under-resourced, the solution doesn’t need to seem the exhausted trying to tackle big programs. In fact, it’s probably more effective to make small, gradual shifts, focusing on small credible actions that rebuild trust. 

What this looks like in practice: 

• Transparency: When promises can’t be delivered (budget constraints, shifting priorities), communicate honestly. Staff prefer bad news with honesty over silence. 

• Follow-through: Prioritise fewer initiatives but actually deliver them. “Over-promise, under-deliver” is the fastest road to disappointment. 

• Fair recognition: Audit recognition systems. Who gets noticed, and why? Make recognition fairer, broader, and less performative. 

• Resourcing: Push back on unrealistic expectations. Nothing erodes engagement faster than being under-resourced and overworked. Now, in Australia, this could risk breaching standards of Psychological Safety in the Workplace.  

Quick summary of trust-building levers: 

• Honesty beats spin. 

• Delivery beats over-promising. 

• Fairness beats favouritism. 

• Adequate resources beat wellbeing tokenistic language. 

7. Disengagement is not a defect of character. 

Disengagement is a survival mechanism in response to disappointment. When staff withdraw, they’re protecting themselves from burnout, betrayal, and repeated let-downs. 

For HR leaders, the challenge (and the opportunity) is to change the narrative. HR Managers can lead the way be stop disengagement being labelled as laziness and start calling out signs of disappointment. 

Because until we do, we’ll keep rolling out programs that don’t do anything and solve nothing, wasting precious resources, and losing the very people who wanted to stay. 

The real cure is accountability and a stronger focus on trust. Trust is built with empathy, and small, consistent actions that prove we mean what we say.