Sort mail
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
Software can pull the data, run the comparison and write up what it found. The accuracy depends almost entirely on whether it is wired into the real system of record rather than a stale copy, which is the problem the tools and auth layer exists to solve.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Analysis and evaluation work |
| Jobs that do it | 16 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Builders, Tools and auth |
| O*NET activity | Processing Information (4.A.2.a.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 16 occupations that perform it.
- Sort and deliver library mail and packages.
- Process incoming or outgoing mail, packages, or deliveries.
- Perform clerical duties such as typing, proofreading, and sorting mail.
- Sort and file correspondence and perform miscellaneous clerical duties, such as answering correspondence and writing reports.
- Perform general office activities, such as typing, answering telephones, operating office machines, processing mail, or securing confidential materials.
- Date-stamp, sort, and rack incoming mail and messages.
- Perform clerical activities, such as answering phones, sorting mail, filing, typing, word processing, and photocopying and mailing out material.
- Collect, sort, distribute, or prepare mail, messages, or courier deliveries.
- Sort items to be delivered according to the delivery route.
- Sort incoming and outgoing mail, according to type and destination, by hand or by operating electronic mail-sorting and scanning devices.
- Sort mail for delivery, arranging it in delivery sequence.
- Sort odd-sized mail by hand, sort mail that other workers have been unable to sort, and segregate items requiring special handling.
- Open, sort, and distribute incoming correspondence, including faxes and email.
- Perform other clerical duties, such as answering telephone, sorting and distributing mail, running errands or sending faxes.
- Sort and route incoming mail, and collect outgoing mail, using carts as necessary.
- Open, sort, and route incoming mail, answer correspondence, and prepare outgoing mail.
- Place incoming or outgoing letters or packages into sacks or bins based on destination or type, and place identifying tags on sacks or bins.
- Stamp dates and times of receipt of incoming mail.
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 analysis and evaluation work, and what it costs.
Start in the assistant with an export of the real data, because the accuracy problem here is a stale copy rather than a weak model. Make, at $9 a month, is the cheapest way to put the pull on a schedule once the analysis is worth repeating.
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
16 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Bill and Account Collectors
- Couriers and Messengers
- Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants
- File Clerks
- Hotel, Motel, and Resort Desk Clerks
- Library Assistants, Clerical
- Library Technicians
- Mail Clerks and Mail Machine Operators, Except Postal Service
- Office Clerks, General
- Postal Service Clerks
- Postal Service Mail Carriers
- Postal Service Mail Sorters, Processors, and Processing Machine Operators
- Receptionists and Information Clerks
- Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service
- Telephone Operators
- Word Processors and Typists
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Sort materials 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.