Companies are slicing management roles this year, but the demands on remaining leaders haven't shrunk. Only 51% of managers with less than three years of experience feel prepared to manage people, and 74% report high levels of burnout that hurt their performance, according to a report from Insperity. The gaps aren't about talent, the report said-they're about a lack of support systems.
Betterworks, a platform that helps companies set goals and track performance, announced this month it acquired Rypple, a native AI platform that offers coaching and mentoring to frontline managers. The acquisition signals a growing interest in AI for Management as organizations look to embed real-time assistance into daily leadership workflows.
"We haven't given managers the tools to be effective," said Doug Dennerline, CEO of Betterworks. "People in this position need tools that let you manage more proactively by understanding when you need to reach out, what you need to say, what you need to do and at what point in time."
New managers are drowning in admin work
The Insperity report blamed administrative burdens, competing priorities, and insufficient preparation for the burnout. Ian Gover, CEO and co-founder of Rypple, said that when individual contributors get promoted, they're expected to suddenly develop organizational leadership skills overnight. "If you're an engineer, you're really good at creating rock-solid code. Then you get promoted, and over the course of a weekend it's expected that you're going to develop this whole new set of organizational leadership and a complex set of new skills," he said.
How AI coaching fills the gap
Rypple lets managers upload their company's competency models, leveling rubrics, and culture documents, along with hundreds of management frameworks. The AI then helps prepare for one-on-ones, construct feedback, navigate employee conflicts, and outline performance improvement plans. It can also connect to Slack and employee calendars to search for relevant management moments, summarize meetings, and suggest next steps.
Reducing the busywork to make room for human connection
Gover said the tool handles scheduling, raw feedback collection, and other tasks that don't require a human touch, so managers can arrive at conversations less drained. "It's facilitating the parts of us coming together that don't really require human connection, like calendaring and scheduling and receiving raw feedback from people. By the time I get to walk into that room, I'm burnt out from all of the things I needed to do in order to get us there," he said.
He described an example where two employees are in conflict: the AI coach would advise gathering feedback from each, then offer to collect that feedback, merge it, identify themes, and set up the meeting. "The true unlock is when AI allows us to become more human in those moments, because it's resolved all the busy stuff, all the grunt work that was needed in order to get there," he added.
Why this matters for managers
The message for managers is clear: AI isn't replacing the human elements of leadership-it's stripping away the friction that gets in the way. Tools like Rypple turn the daily management slog into a series of guided, data-informed actions, giving new leaders the practical support they've been missing. As organizations continue to flatten their structures, the managers who remain need to be more effective, not just more available. AI coaching that integrates into existing workflows can help them get there without burning out.
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