Direct material handling or moving 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 | 15 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 15 occupations that perform it.
- Arrange for hauling of logs to appropriate mill sites.
- Direct ground workers engaged in activities such as moving stakes or markers, or changing positions of towers.
- Direct other workers to move stakes, place blocks, position anchors or cables, or move materials.
- Direct ground crews in the loading, unloading, securing, or staging of aircraft cargo or baggage.
- Transmit and explain work orders to laborers.
- Oversee recycling pick-up or drop-off programs to ensure compliance with community ordinances.
- Enforce safety rules and regulations.
- Give directions to laborers who are packing goods and moving them onto trailers.
- Direct or coordinate crew members or workers performing activities such as loading or unloading cargo, steering vessels, operating engines, or operating, maintaining, or repairing ship equipment.
- Issue directions for loading, unloading, and seating in boats.
- Direct crews to reload freight or to insert additional bracing or packing as necessary.
- Direct helpers engaged in placing blocking or outrigging under cranes.
- Direct or assist workers placing shore anchors and cables, laying additional pipes from dredges to shore, and pumping water from pontoons.
- Supervise oil pumpers and other workers engaged in producing oil from wells.
- Direct workers engaged in placing blocks or outriggers to prevent capsizing of machines when lifting heavy loads.
- Supervise recycling technicians, community service workers, or other recycling operations employees or volunteers.
- Direct workers in transportation or related services, such as pumping, moving, storing, or loading or unloading of materials.
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
15 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors
- Captains, Mates, and Pilots of Water Vessels
- Crane and Tower Operators
- Dredge Operators
- Excavating and Loading Machine and Dragline Operators, Surface Mining
- First-Line Supervisors of Helpers, Laborers, and Material Movers, Hand
- First-Line Supervisors of Material-Moving Machine and Vehicle Operators
- First-Line Supervisors of Passenger Attendants
- Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers
- Loading and Moving Machine Operators, Underground Mining
- Log Graders and Scalers
- Motorboat Operators
- Recycling Coordinators
- Transportation Inspectors
- Wellhead Pumpers
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.