Your next manager may not have a body

Under a non-binding framework prepared by an inter-industry working group on managerial accountability, an employer could in future designate a software system as the official line manager of a human team. The paper carries no legal force, proposes no timetable and is described throughout as a thought experiment. It has been requested in printable form by four companies that do not appear to have read the subtitle.

The proposal would not abolish human managers, and says so in bold type on the second page. It would, in the drafters' words, “clarify where the decision actually happened” — a phrase that appears eleven times in a document that also recommends renaming the one-to-one meeting a feedback cycle and the exit interview a transition retrospective.

Under the framework, the system would set objectives, approve leave and conduct performance conversations through a chat interface. A human accountability holder would remain on the org chart, positioned above the system and, in the sample diagram, very slightly to the left of it. The paper does not explain the leftness.

“Nobody would be managed by a machine,” a spokesperson for the initiative would be careful to point out. “They would be managed by a process that a machine happens to run. We consider that an important distinction, and we are aware that it is the only one.”

Early reaction inside the hypothetical pilot group is described as mixed. Staff would reportedly appreciate the consistency: leave requests approved in under a second, targets that never move on a Friday afternoon, and a manager who never mentions its own weekend. The objection is not to the decisions but to the tone, which one participant would describe as relentlessly encouraging.

The most discussed section concerns appeals. An employee who disagreed with a rating could escalate to the human accountability holder, who would review the reasoning the system had generated. What the framework does not specify is the procedure for the case where the human reads that reasoning and agrees with it, which internal modelling suggests would be almost every case.

None of this is scheduled, funded or drafted into law. The working group stresses that the document exists to provoke discussion. So far it has provoked three requests for an implementation timeline, one question about whether the system would be eligible for a management bonus, and a single email asking whether it could also run the Christmas party.