Competing priorities tax managers trying to deliver business outcomes. AI is one of the fixes.
MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Betterworks today announced research showing that while more than 80% of managers’ roles have grown over the past three years, few leaders agree on how to prioritize their responsibilities. That's creating a gap between what businesses expect from managers and how they're equipped to succeed.
Managers are being asked to do more, but with less visibility into what's changing and less support converting those tasks into results. Organizations can close that gap by redesigning the system that supports managers to convert strategic priorities for growing productivity and results of their teams.
Sizing up the challenge
Managers’ workloads are expanding; most are now expected to boost business results, lead organizational change, develop people, coach performance and adopt AI, often all at once, found Betterworks, which uses AI to help organizations turn performance into measurable business impact.
However, managers’ opinions on how they execute that work range widely. For example, 86% of the 521 HR and business leaders surveyed say leading through change has become more important in the last three years, while just as many say the same about coaching employees.
Another 85% say employee development matters more now; 82% say the same of AI-enabled work; and 82% say the same of talent planning. Forty-seven percent report that managers now lead bigger teams than they did three years ago, found Betterworks.
Managing through so much change could prevent managers from driving real business outcomes, such as turning strategy and priorities into results.
“The findings make one thing clear above all else: the manager role is expanding on nearly every front at once,” said Betterworks CEO Doug Dennerline. “While the barriers holding managers back rarely start with the manager, it’s incumbent on them to figure out how to close the gaps to keep their teams aligned and performing at a high level. This ultimately impacts whether the business hits its goals.”
AI is landing on an already robust role remit
Overseeing the deployment of AI capabilities has come into sharper focus since generative AI services proliferated in 2023 and counts among the newest of managerial responsibilities.
Of Betterworks survey respondents, 78% say their managers oversee people who use AI tools, AI agents or both. Only 10% believe AI will reduce managers' importance, and 82% expect managers to stay as important or become more important to business success.
The survey found that with AI pressuring a role that was already full, AI strategy and manager-capacity planning must be completed together. If AI isn't giving managers time back somewhere, it's adding to their workload. Something has to give.
The playbook for managerial success: start with a redesign
Improving manager effectiveness requires a revamping of the manager role via six specific shifts. They are:
- Redesign the role — don't just relabel it. Get clear on what's been added to the manager job in the last three years, and what's been removed, before adding another training program.
- Treat AI as a capacity strategy. Prioritize AI use cases that give managers time back.
- Run a friction audit. Find out specifically where approvals, meetings, or processes are creating unnecessary work, and run it by the executive team to fix.
- Build the fix with the business. Co-own the outcomes, the scorecard and the redesign across executive leadership, strategy, operations and HR.
- Replace periodic training with real-time coaching. Shift budget toward embedded, in-the-flow-of-work manager support, and measure behavior change.
- Put a business-facing scorecard behind it. Track people metrics next to performance and execution metrics, so the investment case holds up in a room with the CFO in it.
Betterworks is built to help fill these gaps. Its AI software supports real-time goal management; feedback mechanisms that capture performance coaching context within workflows; conversational intelligence; and talent intelligence that connects signals to talent decisions leaders must make.
Read more about the survey findings here.
Methodology:
Betterworks surveyed 521 HR and business leaders across the U.S. and UK, including 263 HR leaders and 258 business leaders, all director-level or above, in August 2026. The goal was to understand how the manager role is actually changing, what's getting in the way of manager effectiveness in driving performance and what separates organizations where managers are thriving from organizations where they're barely keeping up.
About Betterworks
Betterworks helps organizations turn performance into measurable business impact. Built for large and fast-growing companies, its AI-native solution brings goals, feedback, skills, and talent intelligence into the flow of work — giving leaders real-time visibility into workforce capability, manager effectiveness, and progress against business priorities. Betterworks helps organizations align teams, coach employees, support growth and internal mobility, and make confident talent decisions grounded in evidence rather than guesswork. Trusted by leading organizations like Intuit, Betterworks is backed by Kleiner Perkins, Emergence Capital, 8VC, and John Doerr. For more information, visit www.betterworks.com.
Contacts
Media contact
Brandy Patton Miller
PRforBetterworks@bospar.com
