AI exposure: First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers
Directly supervise and coordinate activities of retail sales workers in an establishment or department. Duties may include management functions, such as purchasing, budgeting, accounting, and personnel work, in addition to supervisory duties.
Reading this score
computed41.1% of this occupation's weighted task load is exposed, which puts First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers at the 73th percentile of 923 occupations. The capability is largely there. Its average task scores 2.6 out of 4 on what a current system can produce, and the frictions that hold other jobs in place are comparatively weak here.
What holds the line here is context. Across this occupation's 21 tasks it averages 1.82 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work depends on knowledge the model cannot hold. Much of this job runs on things that were never written down: what this particular organisation does, what happened last week, what the person across the table actually meant. That context is the barrier, and it erodes as systems are given more access.
The most exposed thing this job does is Monitor sales activities to ensure that customers receive satisfactory service and quality goods, at 73.3%. The least is Enforce safety, health, and security rules, at 8.3%. A gap of 65.0% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within sales occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 50.0% across the group's 22 roles, with 19 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 21 tasks, 15 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 6 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take systems being given deeper access to the organisation's own records and history, which is already happening. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Task by task
21 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monitor sales activities to ensure that customers receive satisfactory service and quality goods. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 4.37 | exposed |
| Keep records of purchases, sales, and requisitions. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 4.19 | exposed |
| Estimate consumer demand and determine the types and amounts of goods to be sold. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 3.86 | exposed |
| Assign employees to specific duties. | 66.7% | 33.3% | 0.0% | 4.27 | exposed |
| Plan and prepare work schedules and keep records of employees' work schedules and time cards. | 66.7% | 33.3% | 0.0% | 4.17 | exposed |
| Review inventory and sales records to prepare reports for management and budget departments. | 58.3% | 29.2% | 12.5% | 4.17 | exposed |
| Confer with company officials to develop methods and procedures to increase sales, expand markets, and promote business. | 55.0% | 20.0% | 25.0% | 3.67 | exposed |
| Inventory stock and reorder when inventory drops to a specified level. | 52.5% | 22.5% | 25.0% | 4.16 | exposed |
| Establish and implement policies, goals, objectives, and procedures for the department. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.13 | exposed |
| Formulate pricing policies for merchandise, according to profitability requirements. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.40 | exposed |
| Establish credit policies and operating procedures. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.11 | exposed |
| Provide customer service by greeting and assisting customers and responding to customer inquiries and complaints. | 41.7% | 20.8% | 37.5% | 4.70 | exposed |
| Plan budgets and authorize payments and merchandise returns. | 37.5% | 25.0% | 37.5% | 3.89 | exposed |
| Plan and coordinate advertising campaigns and sales promotions and prepare merchandise displays and advertising copy. | 35.6% | 14.4% | 50.0% | 4.19 | exposed |
| Instruct staff on how to handle difficult and complicated sales. | 30.0% | 20.0% | 50.0% | 4.30 | exposed |
| Hire, train, and evaluate personnel in sales or marketing establishments, promoting or firing workers when appropriate. | 21.2% | 16.2% | 62.5% | 4.21 | untouched |
| Direct and supervise employees engaged in sales, inventory-taking, reconciling cash receipts, or in performing services for customers. | 13.3% | 11.7% | 75.0% | 4.56 | untouched |
| Perform work activities of subordinates, such as cleaning and organizing shelves and displays and selling merchandise. | 11.8% | 4.8% | 83.3% | 4.18 | untouched |
| Examine merchandise to ensure that it is correctly priced and displayed and that it functions as advertised. | 10.0% | 15.0% | 75.0% | 4.38 | untouched |
| Examine products purchased for resale or received for storage to assess the condition of each product or item. | 10.0% | 15.0% | 75.0% | 4.04 | untouched |
| Enforce safety, health, and security rules. | 8.3% | 16.7% | 75.0% | 4.02 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 2.56 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 0.78 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.98 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.89 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.82 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 1.29 | 0-3 |
What this means in practice
Where most of a role's weighted task load is exposed, the work that survives is usually the part of the job nobody wrote into the job description: deciding what should be produced rather than producing it, and being answerable for the result. The tasks lowest on this page are a better guide to where to spend your time than any general advice about the future of work.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.