Assign duties or work schedules to employees
Part of the output can be produced by software today.
An agent can propose the plan, chase the replies and keep the record current. To actually change anything it needs write access to a calendar or work system, and a person still owns the tradeoffs when two plans collide.
| How automatable | Partly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Scheduling, planning and resource control |
| Jobs that do it | 20 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Tools and auth, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Coordinating the Work and Activities of Others (4.A.4.b.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 20 occupations that perform it.
- Assign tasks and work hours to staff.
- Schedule staff or supervise scheduling.
- Assign duties or responsibilities to project personnel.
- Assign or schedule tasks to meet work priorities and goals.
- Assign, coordinate, and review work and activities of programming personnel.
- Supervise and assign work to programmers, designers, technologists, technicians, or other engineering or scientific personnel.
- Assign duties, responsibilities, and spans of authority to project personnel.
- Assign work to biostatistical assistants or programmers.
- Assign security personnel to posts or patrols.
- Determine how many gaming tables to open each day and schedule staff accordingly.
- Assign work schedules, following work requirements, to ensure quality and timely delivery of service.
- Schedule or manage staff, such as volunteer usher corps.
- Provide dressing assistance to cast members or assign cast dressers to assist specific cast members with costume changes.
- Perform general personnel functions, such as supervision, training, and scheduling.
- Supervise and coordinate the work activities of personnel, such as training staff members and assigning work duties.
- Assign employees to specific duties.
- Plan and prepare work schedules, and assign employees to specific duties.
- Assign tasks such as feeding and treatment of animals, and cleaning and maintenance of animal quarters.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for scheduling, planning and resource control, and what it costs.
Scheduling is a connector problem rather than an intelligence one, and $9 a month of Make covers both the calendar and the chasing. An agent platform priced per seat adds nothing you would notice here.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
20 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Biostatisticians
- Childcare Workers
- Computer and Information Research Scientists
- Computer Programmers
- Costume Attendants
- Entertainment and Recreation Managers, Except Gambling
- First-Line Supervisors of Entertainment and Recreation Workers, Except Gambling Services
- First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Gambling Services Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Non-Retail Sales Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Personal Service Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Security Workers
- Industrial Machinery Mechanics
- Information Technology Project Managers
- Project Management Specialists
- Recreation Workers
- Software Developers
- Spa Managers
- Ushers, Lobby Attendants, and Ticket Takers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Assign work to others”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.