A few years back I heard a quote that remains lodged in my head to this day. It was this: "Microsoft Office turns a great chief executive into a lousy PA."
It amused me at the time because I recall emailing AN Print CEO of the period who would never reply by the same method and would always pick the phone up instead. I had a vision of him sitting at a keyboard, jabbing ineffectually at it in that two-fingered typing way adopted by blokes of a certain vintage (she said, in a sweeping generalisation).
Anyhow, suffice to say that same CEO will now happily correspond by email or, gasp, text. I was reminded of this shift in skill sets, roles and attitudes to the use of technology this morning, when a contact (thanks Andrew) pointed me in the direction of an interesting piece in one of PrintWeek's sister magazines, Management Today.
The article 'Disappearing Jobs' looks at roles that are vanishing for one reason or another. Unsurprisingly printing-related jobs feature in the piece, in fact bookbinding and print finishing was deemed the fifth fastest-declining occupation in England during 2001-2009, according to the Labour Force Survey.
It's easy to think of a long list of print occupations that are no more, or consigned to specialist niches, and I speak as someone who started off as a typesetter. To that add film planner, scanner operator, retoucher, compositor... the list in prepress alone goes on and on.
The MT piece talks about a shift to so-called 'value-adding' jobs, involving innovation and creativity. And some of these new roles are of course industry-agnostic, as a quick glance at the jobs listed in PrintWeek and at printweek.com shows: business development managers, development analysts, data processing programmers, customer service specialists - all are now as commonplace in print as they are in many other industries.
Meanwhile, despite print's many ups and downs I remain delighted to this day that my initial ambitions to become a telephonist (long story, but it made sense at the time), didn't quite go to plan.
Ten fastest-declining occupations 2001-2009
- Assemblers (electronic products)
- Collector salespersons and credit agents
- Assemblers (vehicles and metal goods)
- Typists
- Bookbinders and print finishers
- Metal making and treating process operatives
- Metal machine setter and setter-operators
- Telephonists
- Precision instrument makers and repairers
- Sewing machinists
Source: Management Today/ Labour Force Survey
