Survey: Employees Have More Trust in Robots than They Have in Managers

Employees at workplaces now trust artificial intelligence-backed machines more than they trust their managers, a study by US technology firm Oracle has found.

The study of 8,370 employees, managers and HR leaders across 10 countries, found that AI has changed workplace environment, reshaping the role HR teams and managers need to play in attracting, retaining and developing talent.

In the survey, 64% of respondents said they would trust a robot more than their manager, with 50% of them saying that they would rather seek advice from robots than managers.

Surprisingly, a record 82% of people think robots can do things better than their managers.

When asked what robots can do better than their managers, they said robots are better at providing unbiased information (26%), maintaining work schedules (34%), problem-solving (29%) and managing a budget (26%).

Workers in India (89%) and China (88%) have more trust in robots than their managers, followed by Singapore (83%), Brazil (78%), Japan (76%), UAE (74%), Australia/New Zealand (58%), U.S. (57%), UK (54%) and France (56%).

When asked what managers can do better than robots, workers said the top three tasks were understanding their feelings (45%), coaching them (33%) and creating a work culture (29%).

“The relationship between humans and machines is being redefined at work, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to successfully managing this change,” says Emily He, SVP, Human Capital Management Cloud Business Group, Oracle.

“Instead, organizations need to partner with their HR organization to personalize the approach to implementing AI at work in order to meet the changing expectations of their teams around the world,” she adds.