AI Tools Increase Managerial Challenges, Survey Reveals

Companies are equipping employees with AI tools to enhance productivity, yet these tools are creating new challenges for managers.

According to a Nielsen survey of 1,700 directors and senior managers across seven countries, commissioned by the work-management company Monday.com, more than half of senior leaders find it more difficult to evaluate employees’ work after adopting AI. The primary issue is that much of the output now arrives polished in managers’ inboxes, making it challenging to discern how much work was done by the employee versus the AI. Consequently, nearly half of managers report spending more time reviewing and guiding their teams’ output than they did previously.

Despite these challenges, managers are not dissatisfied with AI. In fact, 94% of those surveyed expressed excitement about improving work processes with AI, and many feel confident in identifying areas where AI can provide value. Michal Miller Levi, head of market research and customer insights at Monday.com, likened the current enthusiasm for AI to the early days of the internet, noting a similar sense of “magic” surrounding its potential.

However, Levi pointed out to TechCrunch that the rapid development of AI is outpacing companies’ ability to adapt. She explained, “AI works very well for [managers] individually, but they also have a different role as managers. They need to drive the organization as well. Their struggle is due to the fact that AI is just moving faster than the organizational processes.”

Managers are also reevaluating their assessment methods: 78% of respondents indicated they have adjusted how they evaluate employees since adopting AI, focusing more on employees’ abilities to create prompts, delegate tasks to AI, and experiment with new workflows.

The challenge remains in fairly assessing employees when managers cannot easily determine how much of their work was generated by AI. Additionally, 46% of managers reported using AI to inform their decisions, while 39% utilize AI to draft performance reviews.

This reliance on AI for evaluations could introduce biases into the review process, as large language models (LLMs) are fundamentally prediction machines that can replicate human biases found in their training data. Research from the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research earlier this year indicated that “in the absence of clear objective standards and when individuals are rated independently,” LLMs tend to evaluate performance similarly to humans. Furthermore, a research paper published in early 2025 found that AI models can exhibit bias against Black male candidates, demonstrating significant biases that vary across different social groups.

When asked whether using AI to assess performance could introduce external biases, Levi acknowledged that companies are still figuring out how to address these issues.

AI is also transforming the daily responsibilities of managers. They must now determine which tasks to assign to AI agents, monitor the outputs, and intervene when issues arise. The report suggests that this oversight could create a new layer of “invisible labor.”

Moreover, the software landscape is becoming increasingly complex. Fifty-seven percent of managers reported that their organizations now have more tools in use than before, and about 51% noted that their tools have become more interdependent since adopting AI. Only 29% described their AI infrastructure as fully optimized and centralized.

Levi noted that businesses had anticipated AI would help reduce their software stacks, but instead, they are facing an influx of applications, integrations, and shadow AI usage as employees adopt tools outside of approved systems. “Managers completed 2025 with the feeling that they will consolidate tools, actually; that they’ll reduce the number of software. But what happened is that the number of tools that they’re using increased,” Levi said. “More than 50% are saying that they’re using more tools now than they did last year, and it’s not stopping.”

This growing need for control is becoming urgent as companies deploy AI agents capable of acting independently. The survey revealed that 58% of managers expect to oversee more AI agents than human employees within the next year, and 46% are concerned about losing control over these agents’ actions.

Additionally, there is significant apprehension regarding accountability for decisions made by AI, with 35% of respondents expressing concern, given that LLMs remain largely unpredictable. “They don’t want their agents to be fully autonomous,” Levi explained, emphasizing that managers prefer human involvement and consultation by AI for critical tasks and decisions.

The report highlights that AI adoption is increasingly becoming a governance challenge as much as it is an opportunity for productivity enhancement. Without proper processes and infrastructure in place, managers appear to be struggling to maintain operational efficiency.

Source: TechCrunch