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50 Examples of Routine Work

John Spacey, July 22, 2022

Routine work is work that is repeated. This allows for standard approaches to work such as processes, procedures and practices that produce relatively predictable and uniform results. Routine work tends to be productive with a low rate of failure and standard levels of quality. The following are illustrative examples.

Billing	Book Keeping (accounting)
Cooking Your Favorite Recipe	Customer Complaint Handling
Customer Service (common interactions)	Diagnosing a Common Problem
Driving a Bus (existing route)	Filming an Episode of a Long Running Media Production
Food Processing	Hire-to-Retire
Logistics (e.g. shipping standard items)	Manufacturing
Order Returns	Package Delivery
Payment Processing	Performing Music You've Performed Before
Planting (farming)	Preparing Menu Items At a Restaurant
Product Assembly	Product Packaging
Quality Control (manufacturing)	Reordering (Procurement)
Resolving a Recurring Problem	Service Operations (e.g. running a hotel)
Settling Stock Trades (banking)	Standard Construction (e.g. paving a driveway)
Standard Maintenance	Standard Medical Procedures
Standard Sales (e.g. selling a car)	Teaching a Class You've Taught Before
Technology Operations	Technology Support

Hire-to-retire is the HR process of administering employees throughout their career with a firm.

Anything covered by a business process or procedure is typically routine.

What is routine to one industry or business may not be routine to another. For example, a restaurant with a routine of offering unique dishes every night versus a restaurant where new dishes are seldom introduced such that developing new dishes is a major undertaking.

Non-routine Work

Non-routine work is work that is unique or that isn't repeated very often. The following are basic examples.

Building a Custom House With Unique Architecture	Business Change
Career Change	Complex Sales
Composing Music	Consultative Sales
Cooking a New Type of Cuisine	Custom Work
Development	Disaster Recovery
Experiments	Film Production
Innovation	Odd Jobs
Projects	Request for Proposal (procurement)
Research	Tasks That Recur Infrequently (e.g. 30 year maintenance cycle)

Project Management

Some elements of a project can be routine, particularly project management and related processes such as project governance and project risk management. Likewise, projects that are organized into short repeated sprints resemble an efficient routine more than big, long projects that tend to resemble custom work.

50 Examples of Routine Work

Non-routine Work

Project Management

Work

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