Exchange information with colleagues
Part of the output can be produced by software today.
Software drafts well and sends at volume, and vertical support agents now resolve a large share of inbound questions end to end. What does not transfer is the relationship, and the judgment about when a message should not be sent at all.
| How automatable | Partly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Routine communication and explanation |
| Jobs that do it | 20 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates (4.A.4.a.2) |
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.
- Talk to coworkers using electronic devices, such as computers and radios.
- Attend professional conferences to share information.
- Provide staff with assistance in performing difficult or complicated duties.
- Confer with other supervisors to coordinate operations and activities within or between departments.
- Confer with supervisors or engineers to plan or review work activities or to resolve production problems.
- Confer with other workers about machine setups and operational specifications.
- Confer with engineering, supervisory, or manufacturing personnel to exchange technical information.
- Confer with coworkers to get information about order details, processing plans, or problems that occur.
- Confer with coworkers to obtain information about orders, processes, or problems.
- Study guides, samples, charts, and specification sheets, or confer with supervisors or engineering staff to determine setup requirements.
- Collaborate with interior designers to decorate rooms and coordinate furnishing fabrics.
- Read blueprints, drawings, or written specifications, and consult with designers to determine sizes and shapes of patterns and required machine setups.
- Dispatch orders or instructions to personnel through radiotelephone or intercommunication systems to coordinate auxiliary equipment operation.
- Coordinate with engineers, planners, field personnel, or other utility workers to provide information such as clearances, switching orders, or distribution process changes.
- Inspect records or log book entries or communicate with plant personnel to assess equipment operating status.
- Communicate status of hydroelectric operating equipment to dispatchers or supervisors.
- Receive instructions from steam engineers regarding steam plant and air compressor operations.
- Communicate processing instructions to other workers.
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 routine communication and explanation, and what it costs.
Drafting replies costs nothing beyond the assistant you already pay for. Only move to a support agent billed per resolution once the inbound volume is large enough that the per-resolution price beats the hour it takes you.
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.
- Adhesive Bonding Machine Operators and Tenders
- Electrical and Electronic Equipment Assemblers
- Entertainment and Recreation Managers, Except Gambling
- Environmental Engineers
- First-Line Supervisors of Non-Retail Sales Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers
- Forging Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
- Hydroelectric Plant Technicians
- Machinists
- Model Makers, Wood
- Nuclear Power Reactor Operators
- Power Distributors and Dispatchers
- Power Plant Operators
- Separating, Filtering, Clarifying, Precipitating, and Still Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
- Stationary Engineers and Boiler Operators
- Textile Bleaching and Dyeing Machine Operators and Tenders
- Textile Cutting Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
- Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
- Textile Winding, Twisting, and Drawing Out Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
- Upholsterers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Communicate with others about operational plans or activities”. 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.