Gen Z is turning managers into dead weight
Spare a thought for the managers of this world. No wait, hang on a second, before we get to that thought, I’ve just another one: why are they still called managers? I mean, I get that most of them are still men but a large proportion of the people they manage aren’t men anymore and there are more women ascending to management roles now. So, it feels as if the whole manager and management terminology might be in for a refresh.
Assuming that we still have them, that is.
It was bad enough during Covid when so many managers had no one in the office to manage as normal and had to liaise with them remotely instead. There was a brief spell there when meetings and oversight, the oxygen for so much of what management entails, were significantly reduced. Using Zoom and Teams was a stopgap solution but it was no substitute for the real thing. Although workers might disagree, which is probably why so many were in no great hurry to resume office-based working when the pandemic was over.
Things may be set to become potentially even more perilous thanks to AI. According to a story on this website, more than a third (35%) of Gen Z professionals are using AI tools for work-related questions before asking their manager or colleagues.
This has led to a significant number of Irish professionals (42%) admitting that they are asking fewer questions of their line manager as a result.
Suzanne Feeney, country manager at Robert Walters Ireland, which produced the study, said that while AI tools were enhancing productivity and reducing the time that professionals wait for crucial answers, they were also likely to “introduce complications by outsourcing decision-making, keeping managers out-of-the-loop and limiting opportunities for analytical thinking or idea sharing”.
Now, you can imagine how that state of affairs might induce anxiety among managers. Not only because it threatens to diminish their role but also due to the unplanned consequences that are very likely to arise.
While it might be true that there are some questions and issues that can be dealt with by AI, it’s probably equally true that a decent FAQ or guide to certain topics that might arise on a frequent basis would do just as well and be slightly less problematic.
I use that word because the interactivity that AI brings with it, in this instance, could pose something of a risk. As everyone knows, AI is not entirely reliable and is prone to providing incorrect answers. Imagine that multiplied across the organisation. If AI provides the wrong information to one employee, it’s likely to do exactly the same to everyone else. Unless someone in a position to know the accuracy of that information is made aware of it, it will percolate unfiltered around the organisation.
According to Feeney, organisations need to equip managers “to work alongside AI” and support junior employees in “using it to save time and increase autonomy”. Which sounds great but I can’t help wondering, if employees won’t ask their managers directly, what additional benefit AI provides over a FAQ or range of ‘how to’ guides that are updated on a regular basis by managers.
It almost seems as if adopting AI for this type of use case brings new problems with it. Worse still, management oversight on the use of AI appears to be limited at present.
When you stop to think about it, this seems to be quite a good argument for giving managers the ability to manage the use of AI by employees. Maybe it’s not us that need to spare a thought for managers, maybe it’s the employers implementing or allowing AI that should.
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