Second, we know that if you do happen to work on a team you are twice as likely to score high on the eight engagement items, and that this trend linking engagement to teams extends to multiple teams—in fact, the most engaged group of workers across the working world are those who work on five distinct teams.

Third, just like Lisa, those team members who said they trusted their team leader were twelve times more likely to be fully engaged at work.

A 2018 Gallup study found that barely a third of US employees were fully engaged in their work—where engagement is defined as being “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to work.” The majority of employees, 53 percent, were “not engaged,” while 13 percent—the maliciously compliant—were “actively disengaged.” Globally, the situation is even worse, with 15 percent engaged, 67 percent disengaged, and 18 percent actively disengaged.

Remember the Gallup finding that only two out of ten employees say they have a best friend at work? Based on its research, Gallup estimates that if this number was tripled, to six out of ten, the average company would increase its profitability by 12 percent. Again, when you think about it, this just makes sense. You can hardly expect employees to be engaged in their work if they’re not engaged with each other.

In 1965, chief executives in the top 350 U.S. firms took home roughly twenty times the pay of an “average worker.” By 1980, CEOs in the same top bracket of firms took home thirty times the annual salary of an average worker, and by 2015, that number had surged to just shy of three hundred times. Adjusted for inflation, most U.S. workers gained a modest 11.7 percent rise in real wages between 1978 and 2016, while CEOs typically enjoyed a 937 percent increase in remuneration.

In the most recent iteration of Gallup’s annual State of the Global Workplace report, it is revealed that only very few people find their work meaningful or interesting. They note soberly that “the global aggregate from Gallup data collected in 2014, 2015 and 2016 across 155 countries indicates that just 15% of employees worldwide are engaged in their job. Two-thirds are not engaged, and 18% are actively disengaged.