You can also access this resource and many others in Issue 361 of my Talent Edge Weekly newsletter.
As organizations look for ways to redeploy talent to where it is needed most, one underleveraged opportunity is moving people across occupational and functional boundaries. A new report from OpenAI’s Economic Research team offers an interesting lens into where cross-occupational movement may be most feasible. The team analyzed more than 800,000 work-related ChatGPT conversations from US business users and introduced a concept they call task crossover, instances where someone uses AI to handle work that traditionally belonged to a different occupation. After removing generic tasks like writing and scheduling, they found that 43.5 percent of occupation-specific AI use crosses those traditional job lines. Customer experience, design, and HR workers showed the highest crossover rates. The pattern was strongest at smaller organizations, where workers often do not have a specialist readily available and instead handle the work themselves with AI’s help. These insights carry real value for two areas in particular, internal mobility and skills-based talent strategy. They offer an early signal of where cross-discipline work is already happening, well before it would ever show up in a job posting, a title change, or a formal redeployment plan.
