CEOs expect AI to reduce middle manager headcount due to AI productivity gains and widen the span of control for remaining managers by nearly 20%. Yet, Gartner predicts that by 2028, 75% of organizations that have cut their middle management headcount due to AI investments will end up hiring back at least half of those roles.

Reducing manager headcount via AI is constrained by current technological reality and organizational readiness. Per a July 2025 Gartner survey of 900 HR leaders, 80% agree that managers are overwhelmed by the expanding scope of their responsibilities. Thus, organizations that increase managers’ spans of control today are risking losing significant performance from managers.

Whether the goal is to sustain the CEO’s delayering mandate or simply stabilize the manager role for an AI-augmented future, it’s essential that CHROs leverage agentic AI to support managers for organizational success. Organizations are best served in this endeavor by identifying opportunities to harness agentic AI’s ability to offload routine administrative tasks—automating busywork—while investing in and piloting emerging agentic capabilities to improve effective leadership: advancing better work.

Specifically, organizations should take three actions:

Explore agentic AI use cases within manager workflows

For managers to benefit the most from current and emerging agentic AI tools, it’s incumbent on CHROs to re-envision the manager role. In the future, a manager won’t be required to be an expert in complex technical tasks, but rather someone who excels at leading teams that blend human and machine workflows.

CHROs must identify where automation can relieve administrative burden and where emerging capabilities can augment high-value, people focused management. While the use of agentic AI within manager workflows aims to boost efficiency by taking basic tasks off of managers’ plates, it will also decrease routine interactions between managers and their employees. It’s critical that managers connect more actively and meaningfully with their teams, otherwise they risk losing employee trust and weakening engagement and wellbeing.

Automate busywork

According to a May 2025 Gartner survey of 3,000 employees, 26% of managers, if given the choice, would prefer not being a manager. They typically cited reasons such as the constant drag of low-value administrative tasks, increasing responsibilities and inadequate support.

Automating busywork is particularly important for the organizations that plan to reduce manager headcount and increase the remaining managers’ scope of work. To do so, CHROs must enable managers to integrate agentic AI capabilities into their daily workflows for tasks such as time off approval, agentic onboarding, calendar management and shift management. By delegating time-consuming routine tasks to AI agents, managers free up more capacity to focus on higher-value responsibilities

Advance better work

While most of the AI tools that support managers in today’s workforce are limited to very basic agentic functionality, generative outputs and simple automation, more mature agentic AI capabilities are emerging. With capabilities including autonomous action, contextual adaptation and proactive support capabilities on the horizon, CHROs must plan for the future now.

“Better work” technologies enable more effective people management, such as AI coaching, AI conversation simulators, dynamic performance management and team goal management. Emerging agentic capabilities for these solutions include coaching agents that proactively schedule sessions before critical meetings or performance management agents that autonomously surface insights from engagement and performance data to nudge managers to address bottlenecks. When CHROs invest in and pilot these capabilities now, they better prepare managers to blend human leadership with AI capabilities to drive overall team success.

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