With the pressure of managing 83 employees, Hanno Roma was discouraged and frustrated.
“I was so caught up in all the things that were going wrong between the teams, and feeling that frustration,” says Mr. Rauma, who is based in Vancouver, Canada.
He is a senior manager at Student Marketing Agency, a company that employs university students to provide marketing support for small businesses.
“When I was bringing new clients on board, half of my brain would be saying, 'We're going to screw up,' and that would dampen my enthusiasm.”
But Mr Rauma says that all changed last November, when the firm started using an autonomous AI manager developed by US-based company Inspira.
AI Manager helps agency employees, who work flexible hours remotely, organize their schedules and plan their workloads in advance.
It checks their timekeeping, sends them deadline reminders and regular check-in messages, and records time spent on various clients, so that the latter can be billed accurately. The AI also offers suggestions for improving the vocabulary of written texts, is available to answer work-related questions, and automatically updates everyone's work progress in a central portal.
Mr. Rauma says that the shift to an AI manager has not only reduced his stress levels but also enabled his employees to work faster and be more productive. “I'm able to focus on the growth of the company and all the positive things. It's added years to my life, I'm sure,” he says.
Mr Rauma added that his relationship with his employees has also improved considerably. “Earlier, it felt like a father-child situation. Now, we are on equal footing. Before, it was just about solving problems. But now we can have a more light-hearted conversation. are able
But not everyone at the Student Marketing Agency is using AI Manager yet. Mr Rauma and 26 of his 83 employees were actually part of A. the study Inspira and is run by academics from Columbia University, Arizona State University, and the University of Wisconsin to compare AI manager performance to its human counterparts.
Participants were divided into three groups: one coached by a human manager, another by an AI manager, and a final group coached by both an AI and a human manager.
AI Manager achieved a 44% success rate in getting employees to plan their workdays in advance, and was able to motivate employees to log in 42% of the time. These figures were compared to the human manager, who received scores of 45% and 44% for these two areas.
Yet when the AI manager worked in partnership with a human manager, together they had a 72% success rate in getting employees to plan their workdays in advance, and a 46% success rate in getting them on time. succeeded.
While the study is statistically small, and focused on a specific type of worker and field, its findings point to interesting implications for companies introducing AI tools.
While business likes. UPS, clear, Deal And others have announced significant job cuts this year, with the intention of replacing many roles with AI, says Paul Thurman, a professor at New York's Columbia University. There will be an error.
“The middle management layer is the most important layer in any organization,” says the management professor. “They're the layers that, if it starts to flip, you're in for a wild ride.” Your people don't see continuity, they don't get mentoring and coaching… all the human things that human managers are better at than AI and should focus on.
AI, Professor Thurman added, could free managers from endless reminders and check-ins, to focus on more innovative ways of working. For example, managers can cherry-pick project teams based on individual skills, oversee the brief, then hand over their AI to manage minutia like deadlines.
AI can also identify who is lagging behind on a team and may need to be managed more closely by a human, and by the same token, add star performers who need additional recognition. .
But companies should avoid letting AI become a monitoring tool for managers, he says.
“You don't want to get to the point where you're noting, not only are people not on time, but they're taking too long at lunch, and they're not eating enough salad. You don't want to get to that point, ” says Professor Thurman. “You want to find the right way to encourage the right behavior.”
AI managers can also help people who have become “accidental managers” — people who excel in their roles and manage people, even though management isn't their natural skill, Tina Rahman, Says the founder of a London-based HR consultancy. , HR Habitat.
“We conducted a study that looked at the reasons why people quit. Almost 100% of respondents said it was because of poor management.
“Some of them said they didn't like the way they were managed, and most of them said it was because they didn't know what to do with them,” says Ms Rahman. What is expected or are they doing well,” says Ms Rehman. .
“You would assume that an AI manager would be built to give precise instructions, full transparency on requirements and outcomes. People are likely to be more productive when they know what is expected of them. “
But an over-reliance on AI management sets the tone that companies only care about output and not people, warns Ms Rahman.
“It's going to be very difficult for a business to tell their employees that they're introducing this brand new AI system that's going to completely manage them, then with the same face say, 'We're going to use your workplace. Experiences care,'” she says.
Yet perhaps the biggest concern for AI managers is not from a people perspective, but from cybersecurity, warns James Boor, managing director of cybersecurity consultancy Boors, and a speaker and author.
“If you have an AI manager, and you've given them all of the company's processes, procedures, and intellectual property that's suddenly in software, it can be hijacked by someone who wants to clone it. wants, and may be held for ransom,” says Mr. Bor.
“If you've come to rely on that, which companies will do when they start replacing humans with AI, you're kind of stuck, because you don't have the flexibility, to go back to humans. There is no option to go, because you don't have them anymore.”
Rather than companies becoming more efficient through the widespread use of AI, Mr Bor says there may be an unintended consequence beyond relying on systems that fail.
“The more you automate, and the more you take people out of your business, yes, you reduce costs. But you also make your company more adaptable.”