AI Tools Create New Headaches for Managers
Original: AI promises productivity, but for managers, it’s mostly a headache for now
Why This Matters
AI adoption is reshaping how performance is measured across global workforces.
A Nielsen survey of 1,700 senior managers across 7 countries finds that AI adoption makes it harder to evaluate employee output, with 50%+ saying assessment has become more difficult since adopting AI tools.
Companies rolling out AI productivity tools are inadvertently complicating life for the managers overseeing the people using them. A Nielsen survey of 1,700 directors and senior managers across seven countries, commissioned by Monday.com, found that more than half of senior leaders struggle to evaluate employees' work after AI adoption. The core problem: polished, AI-assisted output lands in managers' inboxes with no clear indication of how much the employee actually contributed.
Nearly half of respondents say they now spend more time reviewing and guiding team output than before. That said, enthusiasm for AI remains high—94% of managers said they were excited to improve work with AI. Monday.com's head of market research Michal Miller Levi told TechCrunch the issue isn't rejection of AI but pace: "AI is just moving faster than the organizational processes."
Managers are adapting their evaluation criteria in response: 78% said they now weigh prompt-writing ability and AI task delegation more heavily. But the picture gets messier—46% of managers use AI to inform decisions, and 39% use it to draft performance reviews. Researchers have flagged that LLMs tend to replicate human bias patterns, with a 2025 paper finding AI models show measurable bias against Black male candidates across multiple social groups.