Will AI Managers Replace Frontline Human Managers in 2025?

While talking to a friend, who recently retired as CHRO of a company with 50,000 employees and 5,000 managers, I learned about a persistent issue: how to retain high-performing individual contributors. Typically organizations are forced to promote them as Frontline Managers to retain them. However, this retention strategy has created more problems than solutions.

🔺 Challenges of a Frontline Manager Not all high performer individual contributors make great managers. They usually lack skills needed to excel in their roles. The assumption is that these managers will eventually learn to manage individual contributors. By the time they acquire necessary behavioural skills, they are promoted to the next level as Managers’ Manager. This leaves individual contributors to continue to be managed by front line managers that are not matured to manage people. The situation leads to disengaged and underperforming teams. My friend asked me, “Can you help the individual contributors in spite of managers rather than because of managers? Managers are not capable of being trained on every aspect. How can you help organisations improve employee experiences while bypassing the limitations of inexperienced managers?

🔺Role of Managers
Key responsibilities of a manager include goal setting, feedback, appraisals, career discussions, coaching, teamwork, and managerial care. While frontline managers can be taught tasks like goal setting, feedback and fostering a good team environment, complex tasks like career discussions and coaching are difficult to master.

🔺Can AI Bridge the Gap?
Training every manager to become exceptional is impractical. If a great manager gets 100% right while an average frontline manager gets 30% right, an AI Manager getting 60% right will be a significant improvement.

AI Applications for Employee Engagement in 2025

➖ Career Counselling: AI systems will provide personalized guidance, helping employees identify strengths, address competency gaps and plan career growth.

➖ Performance Feedback: AI will provide the most of the performance feedback, with managers offering partial input. AI will be trained on various performance scenarios across roles to guide and improve individual contributors.

➖ Competency Mapping and Career Paths: AI will identify individual competencies and gaps, map them to higher-level roles, and guide employees toward their ideal career paths.

➖ Chatbots for Queries: Chatbots will handle employee questions about performance, career growth or workplace concerns, ensuring consistent support.

This will enhance engagement of individual contributors and improve their performance, potentially leading to 𝟐𝟎-𝟑𝟎% 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝟒𝟎-𝟗𝟎% 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐭𝐬 (Assumption: 60% variable cost, 20% fixed cost, and 20% profit).

What do you think?