{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/business-operations-specialists-all-other/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Business Operations Specialists, All Other", "soc_code": "13-1199", "category": "Business", "us_employment": 1087090, "median_annual_wage": 83050 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 34, "contested": false, "near_boundary": true, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 9, "embodiment": 4, "liability_shield": 2, "trust_premium": 8, "judgment_accountability": 11 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Building the weekly KPI rollup, reconciling vendor invoices against PO lines, drafting the SOP after the process change, and turning meeting notes into a RAID log are all now generated at first-draft quality; what holds the score at 9 rather than 4 is the standing-in-a-doorway work — chasing the finance lead who missed the data cutoff, renegotiating a scope line with a supplier who is already behind, and sequencing a rollout across three teams with conflicting calendars.", "embodiment": "Occasional site walkthroughs for a process mapping exercise or a physical inventory count keep this off zero, but the desk, the laptop, and the conference room are the whole workplace, and nothing you touch has a torque spec.", "liability_shield": "There is no licence to hold — PMP, Lean Six Sigma, or CBAP are resume signals, not statutory gatekeepers — and when a contract term or a compliance filing goes wrong the signature on it belongs to a procurement officer, controller, or general counsel, not to you.", "trust_premium": "You accumulate real institutional capital — knowing which director actually approves things versus who is cc'd, and which system of record is quietly wrong — but that is knowledge about the organization rather than a client relationship, and it transfers to your successor within a quarter or two of handover.", "judgment_accountability": "You decide what gets escalated, which of three imperfect vendor options to recommend, and whether a milestone is genuinely at risk or just late-looking, but the go/no-go, the spend authority, and the headcount consequences sit one or two levels above you, which is what caps this at 11 rather than putting it in the ownership band." }, "rationale": "This is a catch-all bucket — program coordinators, process improvement analysts, vendor and contract administrators, business continuity and compliance support staff — and the modal worker spends most of the day in spreadsheets, decks, trackers, dashboards, and status write-ups, which is exactly what current models do at usable quality. What survives is not the artifact but the cross-functional wrangling: getting a reluctant department to actually change a process, deciding which of three bad tradeoffs to escalate, and owning the outcome when a rollout stalls. No license, no signature requirement, so there is no regulatory floor under the role — the protection is purely organizational trust and accountability.", "outlook": "Reporting-and-coordination headcount in this bucket shrinks meaningfully over ten years while a smaller tier of program owners and negotiators who carry accountability grows more valuable.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Formal internal ownership of AI-generated operational outputs: e.g. a named 'human owner of record' for each automated workflow, of the kind the EU AI Act Art. 26 human-oversight duty and NIST AI RMF 'accountable role' guidance are pushing large firms to designate. If ops specialists become the designated reviewers/escalation owners for automated vendor, continuity and compliance processes, the role's consequential-call share rises rather than falls.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Genuine two-tier structure: deck-building, tracker maintenance and status write-ups automate first, leaving cross-functional change management — persuading a reluctant department, negotiating scope with a vendor, deciding what to escalate. If headcount contracts onto the wrangling tier, measured resistance of the remaining job rises even with no new capability barrier.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Sarbanes-Oxley-style attestation extended downward: SOX 404 already forces named process owners to certify internal controls, and SEC cyber/incident disclosure rules (2023) push continuity and third-party risk into certified territory. A rule or auditor practice requiring a named individual to attest that a vendor-risk or continuity control was human-reviewed would create a signature floor where none exists.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Certification bodies (PMI, ASQ, DRI International, ISO 22301 lead-implementer regimes) becoming procurement prerequisites for government or regulated-industry contracts — a credential gate, not personal liability, so worth less than a true licence.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "Even with all of these, this SOC bucket is heterogeneous and mostly unlicensed; the trust premium is organizational, not market-facing, so buyers cannot pay for a named human. Realistic ceiling is mid-40s, and the gains land unevenly — compliance and continuity subroles capture nearly all of them while program coordinators and process analysts capture none." }, "adjudication": { "method": "two independent runs agreed on the verdict", "outcome": "corroborated", "run_totals": [ 34, 34 ], "run_verdicts": [ "EXPOSED", "EXPOSED" ] }, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 1001420, "wage": 70010 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 1060580, "wage": 70530 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 1030330, "wage": 74670 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 1081230, "wage": 75990 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 1103440, "wage": 79590 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 1128200, "wage": 81270 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 1087090, "wage": 83050 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 8.6, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "chief-executives", "title": "Chief Executives", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 69, "median_wage": 213990, "overlap": 80, "skills_to_close": [ "Management of Financial Resources", "Management of Personnel Resources", "Social Perceptiveness", "Management of Material Resources" ] }, { "slug": "managers-all-other", "title": "Managers, All Other", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 46, "median_wage": 141900, "overlap": 76, "skills_to_close": [ "Science", "Operation and Control" ] }, { "slug": "emergency-management-directors", "title": "Emergency Management Directors", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 59, "median_wage": 93330, "overlap": 74, "skills_to_close": [ "Service Orientation", "Learning Strategies", "Instructing", "Social Perceptiveness" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }