Analysing work in terms of tasks can explain how technology, organisational change, and social norms affect the nature of work.
Tasks are discrete pieces of work. Different types of tasks require different skills, and jobs consist of bundles of tasks associated with different specialisations.
Collecting data on tasks can help track changes in working conditions, such as their routineness and standardisation, and can inform policies related to labor market regulation, social protection, and education and training. Analysing the changing nature of work through the lens of tasks also helps understand the changing demand for skills.
The JRC provides conceptual and empirical foundations for a task-based analysis of work, and advances the understanding of the impact of technical change on work and skills, and social classes in the digital age.
Tasks Framework and Tasks Database
The JRC-Eurofound Tasks Framework provides a comprehensive taxonomy of tasks for research purposes. This taxonomy has a hierarchical structure that classifies tasks across three main dimensions, each further divided into sub-dimensions and indicators at different levels of detail:
- Task Content classifies tasks according to the objects on which they operate, and the type of processing involved. At the highest level, it differentiates between physical tasks (which operate on things), intellectual tasks (which operate on ideas) and social tasks (which operate on social relations).
- Methods differentiates how tasks are organised. At the highest level, it differentiates between autonomy, teamwork and routine.
- Tools refers to the physical objects used for aiding tasks at work. At the highest level, it differentiates between non-digital machinery and digital tools.
The EU Tasks Database provides more than 100 indicators measuring all the elements included in the JRC-Eurofound Tasks Framework, by combining data from different international surveys. This database, developed jointly by the JRC and Eurofound is extensively used for studying the impact of technological change on work. The EU Tasks Database is available for independent research.
The JRC also developed a comparative national tasks database based on direct surveys, jointly with a consortium of researchers from four EU countries (Spain, Germany, France Italy and the UK), based on the same approach.
The computerisation of work, routine, and occupational impact of AI
The JRC-Eurofound Tasks Framework and Database shows the complex effects of digitisation on jobs: although computers have been blamed for the decrease employment of routine occupations over the last decades, at the same time computers have increased the intensity of routine tasks for many occupations.
The same framework allows to explore the potential impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) development on EU labour markets. A JRC study measured the level of exposure of different tasks and occupations to current AI development. It mapped AI research intensity, measured through the progress in 328 AI benchmarks, to a set of 14 basic cognitive abilities, and then the cognitive abilities to a list of 59 job tasks to in the JRC-Eurofound tasks framework. The tasks most exposed to AI involve cognitive tasks such as memorisation, understanding text, planning and search, learning and problem-solving. By contrast, there is less exposure in social tasks involving emotional control, social interaction or communication. Overall, high-wage occupations have higher AI exposure than low-wage ones.
Gender gaps in job tasks content
The task framework was used to detect gender differences in tasks performed at the workplace over a period of 25 years in France. The study finds that women still tend to perform fewer physical tasks than men, despite significant increase in such activities in female dominated jobs. Women also appear to be less involved in intellectual tasks and, especially, social tasks such as managing and coordinating. By contrast, social interactions with clients or customers are not more common in female-dominated jobs. The findings challenge the idea that social tasks are responsible for gendered job distribution. This analysis shows that gender matters also in terms of work organisation and distribution of power, highlighting strong asymmetries in the way authority and autonomy are distributed between male and female workers, favouring men.
The teleworkability of occupations
The JRC-Eurofound Tasks Framework and Database were also used to estimate how many jobs can be done remotely (teleworkable). Given the state of current technology, JRC research argues that the ability to work remotely is determined by the absence of physical interaction tasks: physical handling of tools, machinery, or people. Occupations rich in such tasks – those for example of nurses, of production line workers in manufacturing, of farmers – simply cannot be performed remotely with the available technologies. While all other jobs be done remotely in principle, the degree of social interaction they involve may make remote work more difficult.
Technological Change, Tasks and Class Inequality in Europe
The EU Tasks Database provides a useful measure of whether social class schemas based on big social classes, such as the EGP model, are still suited to describe social inequalities in the digital age. JRC research show that big social classes stratify well in terms of job tasks, driving both increasing income inequality and the impact of technological change on employment. Technological change may thus have an unequal impact across social classes. Job tasks can also better predict class membership in some cases, compared to the traditional employment relations indicators used to construct social class categories, and could be used to fine-tune class schemas to better capture labour market inequalities in the digital age.
A unified framework of tasks, skills, and competences
The JRC developed a unified framework for the analysis of occupations, tasks, skills and competences, to reconcile the policy and academic literature on tasks and skills in sociology, economics and education. It defines skill as the ability to do a given task well. Tasks are bundled into occupations, and skills are bundled into competences (together with knowledge, attitudes, and expertise).
Data
- JRC-Eurofound European occupational task database
- Survey-based comparative national tasks database
- European Jobs Monitor
- Teleworkability indices
- Skill-Task dictionary
Publications
Related projects
- Employment
- Telework
- Skills intelligence
- Occupational change
- DIGCLASS: Social Classes in the Digital Age
Contact
JRC-P21-EDU-SKILLS-EMPL
ec [dot] europa [dot] eu (JRC-P21-EDU-SKILLS-EMPL[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)
