Instruct workers to use equipment or perform technical procedures
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 | 9 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Enterprise platforms |
| O*NET activity | Training and Teaching Others (4.A.4.b.3) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 9 occupations that perform it.
- Conduct employee training in equipment operations or work and safety procedures, or assign employee training to experienced workers.
- Explain assembly procedures or techniques to other workers.
- Supervise assemblers and train employees on job procedures.
- Direct and train other workers to change rolls, operate mill equipment, remove coils and cobbles, and band and load material.
- Instruct other workers in machine set-up and operation.
- Instruct new workers in machine operation.
- Train workers to set up, operate, and use automatic bindery machines.
- Interpret legal requirements, provide safety information, or recommend compliance procedures to contractors, craft workers, engineers, or property owners.
- Train or supervise other dental technicians or dental laboratory bench workers.
- Interpret specifications, blueprints, job orders, and company policies and procedures for workers.
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
9 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Dental Laboratory Technicians
- Electrical and Electronic Equipment Assemblers
- First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers
- Heat Treating Equipment Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
- Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers, and Weighers
- Multiple Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
- Print Binding and Finishing Workers
- Rolling Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
- Team Assemblers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Train others to use equipment or products”. 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.