Evaluate employee performance.
Little of this can be handed to software today.
Software can assemble the case and recommend an answer, and that is genuinely useful. The decision stays with a person because someone has to be accountable for it. Treating the recommendation as the decision is how automation projects fail.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Judgment, authorisation and strategy |
| Jobs that do it | 34 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Generalist agents, Models and routing |
| O*NET activity | Judging the Qualities of Objects, Services, or People (4.A.2.a.1) |
What could do this work.
These are the categories of tool that address judgment, authorisation and strategy, with a few live examples from our landscape. We name the category rather than promise that a specific product does your specific task, because that promise would not be true.
Generalist agents
Models and routing
Categories are matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Before committing to any of them, check that the tool can reach the system your record actually lives in. That connection, not the model, is where most of these projects stall.
Who does this work.
34 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Advertising and Promotions Managers
- Computer and Information Systems Managers
- Education Administrators, Postsecondary
- Education and Childcare Administrators, Preschool and Daycare
- Exercise Physiologists
- Fire Inspectors and Investigators
- First-Line Supervisors of Correctional Officers
- First-Line Supervisors of Entertainment and Recreation Workers, Except Gambling Services
- First-Line Supervisors of Firefighting and Prevention Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Gambling Services Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Passenger Attendants
- First-Line Supervisors of Personal Service Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Police and Detectives
- First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers
- Food Service Managers
- Fundraising Managers
- Gambling Managers
- Industrial Production Managers
- Industrial-Organizational Psychologists
- Investment Fund Managers
- Lodging Managers
- Medical and Health Services Managers
- Natural Sciences Managers
- Parking Enforcement Workers
- Postmasters and Mail Superintendents
- Property, Real Estate, and Community Association Managers
- Public Relations Managers
- Recreation Workers
- Residential Advisors
- Sales Managers
- Security Managers
- Spa Managers
- Training and Development Managers
- Treasurers and Controllers
Work that goes with it.
O*NET groups these under “Evaluate personnel capabilities or performance”. 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.