Managers spend much of their day working on tasks that robots will do better in the future, according to a survey released Wednesday by Accenture Strategy, the strategy arm of the global professional services company.

More than 8 in 10 managers say they spend a significant part of their day planning and coordinating work, 65% solving problems and related tasks, 52% monitoring and reporting performance and 45% analyzing and sharing information, according to the survey, which questioned 1,700 managers across 17 industries.

But in roughly five to 10 years, intelligent machines will likely be able to do many of these tasks more effectively than humans, says Bob Thomas, the managing director of Accenture Strategy. “We are entering a different kind of technological era,” he says — one in which robots play a much bigger role at work.

Already, robots do many jobs — often lower-level, manual tasks — better than humans, including stocking shelves and farming. “Advanced robots are gaining enhanced senses and dexterity, allowing them to perform a broader scope of manual tasks,” write the authors of the 2013 study from Oxford University entitled “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation.”

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