The American workplace may be losing the fight to keep employees engaged. In June 2013, Gallup released its first State of the American Workplace study and revealed that only 30 percent of workers felt engaged in their jobs. Since then, millions, if not billions, have been spent by companies big and small in efforts to boost engagement levels. These programs have ranged from the noble to the absurd, but one overarching truth has remained: Management has gained very little ground. Gallup shows that engagement levels have remained relatively flat for most of 2015, and changes over the past two and a half years have been minuscule. “What a lot of companies have done is to simply replace the terminology for their annual survey and call it an engagement instrument,” said Jim Harter, Gallup’s engagement expert. “Making things worse, they vary widely in terms of their definitions and what they measure. A whole lot of things are now being called engagement that shouldn’t be.” Harter said that often companies will ask questions not truly related to engagement to inflate their numbers. “Reporting high numbers seems to make a lot of leaders feel good,” said Harter, “but those won’t get them where they need to be.”