For most of 2024 and 2025, companies will measure their AI adoption by one metric: how much time and money is saved. The company automated repetitive tasks, reduced headcount, and reduced marginal gains in existing workflows.
Ben Barnett, Regional Vice President UK&I at Monday.com, says this approach is dead. By 2026, organizations will prioritize effectiveness over efficiency, shifting from speeding up work to ensuring teams are doing the right things.
“In 2026, successful organizations will stop pursuing marginal efficiency gains and pressuring to cut costs, and focus on efficiency – tasks and tasks that are meaningful, manageable and empowering.”
AI task management goes beyond simple task automation.
Early AI deployments automated emails, summarized meetings, and handled administrative tasks. These applications saved time, but they didn’t change the way companies made decisions or set priorities.
According to Monday.com AI at Work According to the report, 59% of UK directors say AI has improved their decision-making and insights. As a result, technology has moved from operations management to the strategic realm. According to Barnett:
“AI is already playing a key role here, but building this momentum requires a holistic approach to effectiveness, based on a cultural change that places motivation and engagement in the workplace at its core.”
Gartner calls 2026 the “era of growth efficiency.” Their research shows that successful organizations will remove friction from difficult tasks. Meanwhile, it’s not just about automating simple tasks. This approach allows employees to focus on tasks that require judgment and problem solving.
Why Employee Empowerment Drives Work Management Success
Barnett says technology alone doesn’t get you results. Instead, organizations must restructure their operations in a way that treats AI as a cost-saving tool to achieve limited returns. Barnett explains:
“Companies that recognize and reward problem-solving, experimentation, and cross-functional collaboration will make their employees feel more connected to their work and its outcomes.”
Most task management platforms operate as top-down monitoring systems. But an efficiency approach requires something else. In particular, we need tools that give employees more power.
How to measure business management efficiency in 2026
The shift from effectiveness to effectiveness changes the criteria by which companies measure themselves. For many years, job completion rate and delivery time have been used as standard KPIs. However, it does not show whether the team is working according to the correct priorities. Additionally, it doesn’t reveal whether employees feel engaged.
Organizations in 2026 will need to track a variety of metrics. This includes where teams get stuck and where collaboration stops. You also need to know where important tasks are being put on the back burner in favor of urgent but low-impact tasks.
The tools to make this change possible already exist. Nevertheless, the question remains whether organizations will change the way they think about managing their work. In particular, this means moving from monitoring tasks to influencing influence.
Organizations that make this change will be better able to retain talent. They can also compete more effectively in markets where baseline productivity is no longer a differentiation factor. On the other hand, those who continue to optimize purely for speed will suffer.
Work management platforms will succeed by helping organizations answer different questions. Not “How fast can you work?” But “Are we doing anything important?”
“Empowered people take ownership of their own progress and autonomy, and are more likely to use tools, including AI, to remove friction from their workflow and increase their influence,” explains Barnett. “A people-centric approach to efficiency, on the other hand, leads to faster innovation cycles, higher customer satisfaction, and employees who feel energized by the work they own.”