Direct department activities
Little of this can be handed to software today.
The reporting and paperwork around management automate well. Directing, developing and evaluating people does not, and people do not accept it when it is attempted on them.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Managing, training and developing people |
| Jobs that do it | 36 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Enterprise platforms |
| O*NET activity | Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates (4.A.4.b.4) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 36 occupations that perform it.
- Perform administrative duties, such as serving as department head.
- Perform administrative duties, such as serving as a department head.
- Perform administrative duties, such as serving as department heads.
- Classify and assign registration numbers to artifacts and supervise inventory control.
- Supervise daily library operations, budgeting, planning, and personnel activities, such as hiring, training, scheduling, and performance evaluations.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing. The reporting and paperwork around management run on whatever you already use for documents, and the part that is actually managing people does not automate at any price.
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.
Enterprise platforms
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
36 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Agricultural Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary
- Anthropology and Archeology Teachers, Postsecondary
- Architecture Teachers, Postsecondary
- Area, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies Teachers, Postsecondary
- Art, Drama, and Music Teachers, Postsecondary
- Atmospheric, Earth, Marine, and Space Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary
- Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Business Teachers, Postsecondary
- Chemistry Teachers, Postsecondary
- Communications Teachers, Postsecondary
- Computer Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement Teachers, Postsecondary
- Economics Teachers, Postsecondary
- Education Teachers, Postsecondary
- Engineering Teachers, Postsecondary
- English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
- Environmental Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Family and Consumer Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary
- Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
- Forestry and Conservation Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Geography Teachers, Postsecondary
- Health Specialties Teachers, Postsecondary
- History Teachers, Postsecondary
- Law Teachers, Postsecondary
- Librarians and Media Collections Specialists
- Library Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Mathematical Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Museum Technicians and Conservators
- Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary
- Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary
- Physics Teachers, Postsecondary
- Political Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary
- Recreation and Fitness Studies Teachers, Postsecondary
- Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary
- Sociology Teachers, Postsecondary
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Direct organizational operations, activities, or procedures”. 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.