UK AI Exposure · Administrative and secretarial occupations
Other administrative occupations n.e.c.
Job holders in this unit group are responsible for recording, filing and disseminating information for a business, organisation or individual not elsewhere classified in minor group 415: Other administrative occupations
- Employees (UK)
- 728k
- Median annual pay
- £23,385
- Exposure score ?
- 6.9/10 High direct 6.9 · with tools 9.7
- Wage exposure
- £11.75bn
Higher exposure than 99% of the 379 UK occupations we scored.
What this score means
Most of the routine task inventory in this role can already be done by a capable LLM. That doesn't mean the role disappears - it means the shape changes, and one person can credibly do the work of several.
If you're in this role, here's what to do now
Stop doing anything an LLM can do. Your edge is judgment, relationships, taste, and the parts of the work that require you to be in the room. The operators who notice this first and redesign their workflow around it will be paid for those things; the ones who cling to the old task list will compete against AI at AI's prices.
The tasks in this role, ranked by AI exposure
Below are the real tasks O*NET records for this occupation, sorted highest exposure first. "AI can do this" means a language model can already handle the task directly. "AI can help" means an LLM can assist but not replace. "Human work" means today's AI doesn't touch it. Importance is O*NET's 1–5 rating of how central each task is to the role.
8 of 19 tasks in this role are things an AI can already do today. Task list mapped via O*NET "Order Clerks" (43-4151.00).
Review orders for completeness according to reporting procedures and forward incomplete orders for further processing.
Obtain customers' names, addresses, and billing information, product numbers, and specifications of items to be purchased, and enter this information on order forms.
Prepare invoices, shipping documents, and contracts.
Verify customer and order information for correctness, checking it against previously obtained information as necessary.
Recommend type of packing or labeling needed on order.
Compute total charges for merchandise or services and shipping charges.
Inform customers by mail or telephone of order information, such as unit prices, shipping dates, and any anticipated delays.
File copies of orders received, or post orders on records.
Recommend merchandise or services that will meet customers' needs.
Inspect outgoing work for compliance with customers' specifications.
Receive and respond to customer complaints.
Check inventory records to determine availability of requested merchandise.
Confer with production, sales, shipping, warehouse, or common carrier personnel to expedite or trace shipments.
Direct specified departments or units to prepare and ship orders to designated locations.
Adjust inventory records to reflect product movement.
Collect payment for merchandise, record transactions, and send items, such as checks or money orders for further processing.
Calculate and compile order-related statistics, and prepare reports for management.
Attempt to sell additional merchandise or services to prospective or current customers by telephone or through visits.
Notify departments when supplies of specific items are low, or when orders would deplete available supplies.
Where a project with Alex usually starts for this role
These are the highest-importance tasks in this role that a language model can already handle directly. In a typical engagement the first wins come from building workflows around these, so they stop eating your team's time.
-
Review orders for completeness according to reporting procedures and forward incomplete orders for further processing.
-
Obtain customers' names, addresses, and billing information, product numbers, and specifications of items to be purchased, and enter this information on order forms.
-
Prepare invoices, shipping documents, and contracts.
Every role has three or four wedges like these. Finding them takes an hour. Turning them into a workflow your team actually uses takes a few days. Talk to Alex about a project →
Stay on top of this
One email a week, written for people who aren't AI nerds. What's actually real, what's hype, and what smart operators are doing about it.
Get the weekly note
One email a week from Alex on how AI is changing UK work, how to get ahead of it, and what smart operators are actually doing. Written for people who aren't AI nerds.
Free. Unsubscribe any time.
Or go deeper:
Methodology
This role's exposure score comes from Eloundou et al's 2023 GPT task labels, aggregated by O*NET importance within each O*NET-SOC code, then bridged to UK SOC 2020 via ISCO-08 (ONS Vol 2 coding index) and US SOC 2010 (BLS crosswalk). Employment and median pay come from ONS ASHE Table 14.7a, 2025 provisional. ASHE covers employees only, so self-employed workers are not counted.
Get the weekly note. One email on how AI is changing UK work.