Workforce Technology Is Working. Now It’s Time to Go Further.

For years, workforce technology has focused on making work easier to manage: building schedules faster, filling gaps, keeping up with changing availability, and giving employees more visibility and control over where they work.

We’re starting to see that investment pay off.

Our 2026 State of the North American Hourly Workforce research, which includes responses from 1,890 employees and managers across 11 industries, shows leaders spending less time on scheduling and attendance than they did a year ago. Employees are seeing more technology that helps accommodate their schedule preferences, and AI is moving quickly from a topic of conversation to a tool managers actually use.

That’s meaningful progress. That progress also makes the remaining manual work easier to see.

Forty-nine percent of managers still fill open shifts by calling or texting employees one at a time. Employees continue to want greater control over their schedules. And as AI takes on more work, expectations for transparency and trust are rising with it.

So the next question leaders should ask is: “What should we automate, and how will it make work better?”

The First Layer of Automation Is Working

For a long time, workforce technology has been asked to solve a straightforward problem: take the administrative burden out of managing an hourly workforce.

The data suggests we’re making real progress. The share of managers spending three or more hours a week on time and attendance declined from 52% to 45%.

That time creates room for higher-value work. Thirty-nine percent of managers say they would use time freed from administrative tasks to coach and develop their teams.

Employees are seeing progress, too. Eighty-two percent say technology helps their manager accommodate their schedule preferences, and flexibility remains the number-one thing employees want beyond pay.

Technology is removing friction for both managers and employees. But automating the core workforce management (WFM) processes has exposed another layer of work surrounding them.

The Next Layer Is the Work Around the Work

Consider what happens when someone calls out.

A manager still has to determine who’s available, who has the right skills, who has available hours, who wants more hours, and who can actually take the shift. Nearly half of managers (49%) still fill open shifts by calling or texting employees one at a time.

At the same time, 53% of employees say more control over their schedules is the number-one thing they want beyond pay.

The same scheduling process creates both problems.

AI can help connect them. AI scheduling adoption increased from 11% to 16.5% year over year, and roughly 57% of managers say they’re using AI in some form, from drafting communications and querying data to receiving proactive alerts.

Next, AI can help with the work surrounding the schedule, like anticipating coverage gaps, matching skills, availability, and employee preferences, handling exceptions, and managing call-outs.

Instead of only helping managers complete tasks, technology can handle the routine work while also ensuring managers retain oversight and accountability.

That only works if managers and employees trust it.

More Automation Requires More Trust

AI adoption is growing faster than confidence.

Managers who worry AI will replace their role have more than doubled this year, reaching 11%. Among employees, the concern is even more direct: 72% say the most important thing about AI at work is knowing it won’t replace their job or reduce their hours.

As technology takes on more responsibility, people need greater visibility into what it’s doing and why. Managers need to be able to understand and verify its actions. Employees need confidence that automation is working with them, not against them.

That doesn’t mean requiring a human to perform or approve every routine task. It means being deliberate about where human judgment and accountability belong.

AI can handle more of the checking, matching, correcting, and routine execution while managers retain visibility, agency, and accountability for the outcome.

Effective AI should make automation easier to understand, trust, and control.

The Opportunity Is Bigger Than Efficiency

Efficiency is an important part of the workforce management equation: How much time did managers get back ? How much did we reduce labor cost? How quickly can we fill a shift?

Managers also want to know that they have the right people in the right places.

Eighty-five percent of managers want technology that measures hourly employee productivity, and 86% want scheduling tools that automatically place top performers in the shifts where they can have the greatest impact.

That points to a much bigger opportunity. Workforce technology should do more than fill the required number of positions. It should place the right people at the right times while accounting for employee preferences, skills, and business needs.

For employees, that can mean more control, better-fit hours, and greater opportunities to contribute. For managers, it means better decisions without more administrative work. And for the business, it means turning workforce management from an administrative function into a lever for performance.

We’ve Made Progress. Now We Have to Build on It.

This year’s findings show progress: managers are spending less time on administrative work, employees are seeing greater flexibility, and AI is beginning to handle work that has traditionally landed on managers.

But the remaining challenges—staffing gaps, turnover, manual processes, and the need for greater employee control—haven’t disappeared. What’s changed is our ability to solve them.

The next era of workforce technology will be defined not simply by how much we automate, but by how intelligently we orchestrate the work: giving employees greater agency, managers more capacity to lead, and businesses better operational outcomes.

We’ve proven technology can make work more efficient. Now it’s time to use it to make work better.

 

Read the full 2026 State of the North American Hourly Workforce Report