Would having an AI boss be better than your current human one?

With the stress of managing 83 employees taking its toll, Hannu Rauma felt down and frustrated.

“I got too caught up in all the things that went wrong between the teams and I felt so disappointed,” says Mr. Rauma, who is based in Vancouver, Canada.

He is a senior manager at the Student Marketing Agency, which employs college students to support small business marketing.

“When I was bringing new clients on board, half of my mind was thinking, ‘Fuck it,’ and that dampened my enthusiasm.”

But Mr Rauma says that has all changed since last November, when the firm started using an AI autonomous manager developed by US company Inspira.

AI Manager helps agency employees who work remotely with flexible working hours set their schedule and plan their workload in advance.

It checks their timesheets, sends them appointment reminders and regular check-in messages, and logs time spent with different clients so they can be billed accurately. The AI ​​also provides suggestions for improving the wording of written text, is available to answer work questions, and automatically updates everyone’s workflow in a central portal.

Mr Rauma says the move towards an AI manager has not only reduced his stress levels, but has allowed his staff to work faster and be more productive. “I can focus on the growth of the company and all the positive things. I am sure it has added years to my life,” he says.

Mr. Rauma adds that his relations with his employees have also improved drastically. “Before, it felt very much like a father-child situation. We are more equal now. Before, it was just about solving problems. But now we are able to have more light-hearted discussions.”

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 study conducted by Inspira and academics from Columbia University, Arizona State University and the University of Wisconsin to compare the performance of AI managers with their human counterparts.

The participants were divided into three groups: one was coached by a human manager, another by an AI manager, and the last group was coached by both an AI and a human manager.

The AI ​​manager achieved a 44% success rate in getting employees to plan their workdays in advance and was able to motivate employees to report on time 42% of the time. These numbers were comparable to a human manager who scored 45% and 44% in these two areas.

However, when an AI manager worked with a human manager, together they achieved a 72% success rate in getting employees to plan their workdays in advance, and managed to achieve a 46% on-time success rate.

Although the study is statistically small and focused on a specific type of worker and industry, its results point to interesting implications for companies implementing AI tools.

While companies such as UPS, Klarna, Dell and others have announced significant job cuts this year with the intention of replacing many roles with artificial intelligence, Professor Paul Thurman of Columbia University in New York says that completely replacing management roles with artificial intelligence would be a mistake.

“Middle management is the most critical layer in any organization,” says a management professor. “They’re the layer that, when it starts to turn over, 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.”

Artificial intelligence, Professor Thurman adds, can free managers from endless reminders and check-ins to focus on more innovative ways of working. For example, managers can select project teams based on individual skills, oversee assignments, and then hand them over to their AI to handle small things like deadlines.

The AI ​​can also identify who is lagging behind in the team and may need to be guided more closely by a human, and for the same reason, target star performers who require special recognition.

But companies should avoid making AI managers a surveillance tool, he says.

“You don’t want to get to the point where you notice that not only are people not on time, but they’re taking too long at lunch and not eating enough salad. You don’t want to go that far,” 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 lead people as a result, even though management is not a natural skill for them, says Tina Rahman, founder of a London-based HR consultancy. , HR Habitat.

“We did a study that looked at the reasons why people leave their jobs. Almost 100% of respondents said it was due to poor driving.

“Some of them said they didn’t like the way they were managed, and most also said it was because they didn’t know what was expected of them or if they were doing a good job,” says Ms Rahman. .

“You would expect an AI manager to be built to give the right direction, to provide full transparency of requirements and outcomes. People are likely to be more productive when they know what is expected of them.”

But over-reliance on AI management sets the tone that companies only care about output and not about people, warns Ms Rahman.

“It’s going to be very difficult for a company to tell their employees that they’re implementing this brand new AI system that’s going to completely manage them, and then with the same face say, ‘We care about your experience in the workplace,'” she says.