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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3341

Office supervisors

Software can assign the work. Supporting a team through a bad day is still a supervisor.

Coordinating and checking the clerks' work is the one task AI could take a fair chunk of. Solving problems, training staff and judging performance are mostly out of its reach.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Office supervisors supervise and coordinate the activities of workers in Major Group 4: Clerical Support Workers. Tasks include - (a) coordinating, assigning and reviewing the work of clerks engaged in the following duties: word processing, record keeping and filing, operating telephones and switchboards; data entry, desktop publishing and other activities involving general office and administrative skills; (b) establishing work schedules and procedures and coordinating activities with other work units or departments; (c) resolving work-related problems and preparing and submitting progress and other reports; (d) training and instructing employees in job duties, safety procedures and company policies, or arranging for training to be provided; (e) evaluating employees’ job performance and conformity with regulations, and recommending appropriate personnel action; (f) assisting in recruitment, interviewing and selection of employees. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Clerical supervisor - Data entry supervisor - Filing clerks supervisor - Personnel clerks supervisor Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Medical records unit supervisor - 3252 Notes Workers who supervise the activities of clerical support workers in law offices and legal departments are classified in Unit Group 3342: Legal Secretaries. Those who supervise the activities of clerical support workers in health facilities where the work requires specialist knowledge related to health and medicine, such as processing medical records and hospital admission details, are classified in Unit Group 3344: Medical Secretaries. Those who provide direct secretarial and administrative support to a manager or professional, (except legal and health professionals) and also supervise the activities of clerical support workers are classified in Unit Group 3343: Administrative and Executive Secretaries.

  • call centre manager
  • contact centre supervisor
  • field survey manager
  • data entry supervisor
  • office manager
  • call centre supervisor
  • call centre analyst
  • call centre quality auditor

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

57 / 100

Changing significantly

AI could do a real share of the everyday tasks. The job is changing shape, not vanishing.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Exposed: Gradient 2

341 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 6 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 42.9 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 42.9 = 57.1.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 2”: A good share of the tasks are affected.

This job rates 35.4 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Office supervisors 57

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Assigning and reviewing work.
  • Progress reports.
  • Scheduling.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Training and coaching staff.
  • Handling problems.
  • Evaluating performance fairly.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Teams working alongside AI agents.
  • Smaller call centres.
  • Quality checks on AI responses.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Medium

54 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 71 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

35 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 13 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

35 How
hands-on
13 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, matched to one US job .

finger skill 30.3 · hand skill 7.1 · cramped spaces 2.8 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 64, against an average of 43. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 64

    Coordinating, assigning and reviewing the work of clerks engaged in the following duties: word processing, record keeping and filing, operating telephones and switchboards; data entry, desktop publishing and other activities involving general office and administrative skills

    Medium
  2. 47

    Resolving work-related problems and preparing and submitting progress and other reports

    Low
  3. 41

    Assisting in recruitment, interviewing and selection of employees.

    Low
  4. 39

    Establishing work schedules and procedures and co-coordinating activities with other work units or departments

    Low
  5. 34

    Training and instructing employees in job duties, safety procedures and company policies, or arranging for training to be provided

    Low
  6. 34

    Evaluating employees’ job performance and conformity with regulations, and recommending appropriate personnel action

    Low

6 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
71
AI does it for you
54

Sidekick wins, by 17 points.

How good a match is this?

3 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 5121, 5122, 5411

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Out of every 100 conversations

44
56

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job. This job makes up 0.38% of the conversations.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should office and call centre supervisors be worried?

Short answer: not worried, but paying attention. The job is changing.

Parts of it are changing. Coordinating clerical work is rated Medium; problems and reports, recruitment, schedules, training and evaluating staff are Low. As AI takes on clerical and call centre work, teams get smaller and supervision changes.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” family, averaging 66. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →