AI users spend more time on coordination, study finds

In Parallel has published research showing that managers who use artificial intelligence daily spend more time on coordination work than those who do not. The study covered 247 managers across five countries.

The Helsinki-based software company found that managers lose an average of 16.5 hours a week to status meetings, re-explaining work and searching for information. It estimated this costs about USD $64,600 per manager each year.

The findings suggest a gap between broad AI adoption and the day-to-day demands of management. According to the survey, 86% of managers use AI, yet daily users reported the heaviest coordination load at 20.3 hours a week, compared with 9.1 hours for managers who do not use AI.

In Parallel calls this lost time a "coordination tax", or the effort required to keep people, decisions and work aligned before core tasks can begin. It argues that AI has improved individual productivity more than it has reduced the overhead of managing teams and information across an organisation.

The research also found that managers underestimate the scale of the issue. Respondents thought coordination took up about 21% of their week, but their itemised responses suggested the true figure was 41%.

Nearly half of that time was spent in status meetings. The rest was split between repeating context and searching for information spread across documents, chat tools, email and meeting notes.

AI and context

In Parallel said the results do not suggest AI itself creates more work. Instead, current systems often lack access to the organisational context needed to understand earlier decisions, discussions and commitments.

That view reflects a wider debate in business software over whether stronger AI results depend less on the underlying models and more on the quality and availability of internal company data. For managers, this often appears in routine tasks such as tracking decisions across teams, clarifying task ownership and finding reliable information.

Markku Mäkeläinen, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of In Parallel, said customers expected AI to cut time spent on administrative coordination rather than simply help employees complete tasks faster.

"Everyone expected AI to eliminate busywork. Instead, we're seeing organisations invest in increasingly capable AI while managers continue spending enormous amounts of time simply keeping work aligned," Mäkeläinen said.

"Our customers tell us they didn't invest in AI just to work faster. They invested because they expected it to reduce the time spent chasing information, rebuilding context and coordinating work. That's what managers are really asking for, and AI becomes far more valuable when it understands what the organisation already knows," he said.

Product focus

In Parallel said it has built what it calls an AI context layer that links meeting decisions, project history, organisational knowledge and ownership information. The aim is to make existing information easier for both employees and AI systems to use.

Founded in 2023, In Parallel is headquartered in Helsinki and operates in Munich. It develops software designed to organise internal knowledge and decision trails for businesses using AI tools.

The survey suggests managers see value in that approach. Respondents said AI assistants with access to shared organisational context could save an average of 4.4 hours a week, equal to 27% of the coordination time identified in the research.

Kristian Luoma, Co-Founder of In Parallel, said the next stage of AI in business would depend on whether systems can work with what companies already know.

"The next generation of enterprise AI won't be defined by better models alone," Luoma said.

"It will be defined by how well AI understands the organisation it's working inside. Companies already have the knowledge they need to make better decisions. The challenge is making that knowledge available to every person, and every AI system, at exactly the moment it's needed," he said.

The managers surveyed were based in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Germany.