Every few weeks another headline predicts the death of administration.
Yesterday, Forbes listed “administrative and clerical work” among the five jobs most at risk of AI automation. They’re right about the clerical. They’re profoundly wrong about the wider profession.
Here’s why.
💡 AI will take the tasks. Scheduling, filing, routine data entry – the repetitive stuff that has wrongly defined the administrative profession for years will go. That’s good news. It frees assistants from being defined by a task list.
💡 The real work of administrative professionals has been strategic for at least the last decade. The assistant who translates a vague instruction or idea into action points, briefings, and solutions is doing judgement, not clerical. The assistant who holds a client relationship steady during a crisis isn’t doing “support”, they are safeguarding revenue and reputation.
💡 The profession is already moving up the value chain. LinkedIn and Microsoft data show the fastest-growing skills for assistants are project management, data analysis, financial literacy, and change management. These are not clerical. They are business-critical.
💡 The risk isn’t AI. It’s perception. If organisations keep describing assistants as “just support,” they’ll automate them out of existence. If they recognise the role as strategic partnership, they’ll unlock one of the most cost-effective assets already in their business.
💡 This is the moment. The assistants who thrive in the AI era will:
• Use AI to eliminate low-value work.
• Upskill in finance, data, and strategy.
• Position themselves as business partners, not administrators.
• Speak the language of impact: risk avoided, revenue protected, leadership enabled.
So yes, clerical work will vanish. But clerical work was never the profession.
The real question is not “Will administration disappear?” The real question is “When will we finally start respecting it as the strategic partnership it already is?”
