360DigitalInfluence

The website Careercast.com has once again posted its best and worst jobs list. Anyone interested in employee engagement should take a look.

At first glance, it’s not that surprising – the top jobs, starting with actuary, are generally white collar, and those at the bottom of the list are physical and risky (roustabout – providing “routine physical labor and maintenance on oil rigs and pipelines” – takes the last spot on the “worst” list).

The list isn’t perfect, and the generalized criteria used won’t fit every individual circumstance. Take me, for instance. My previous career, historian, comes in at #5, far surpassing the ranking of my current job, public relations executive, which sneaks in at #79. According to the methodology, Historian ranks lower in stress, and higher in hiring outlook, and the pay is not that different. That wasn’t my experience. Academics have to go where the jobs are, and for me, living thousands of miles away from my family caused a huge amount of stress that was alleviated by moving back home, which changing careers enabled me to do. I have a hard time believing the hiring outlook in history is that great, especially since last Sunday’s New York Times Education Life section included the startling statistic that only 27 percent of today’s college professors are full time, tenured or tenure-track, down from 75 percent in 1960. And I don’t know where they came up with the income of $89K for a historian, unless they counted only full professors (ten years after I left the profession starting salaries are half that, if you’re lucky).

Still, dig into the methodology, and you may think about your employees in a new way.

The ranking categorizes information in five “core” criteria:

• Environment – physical factors such as noise, toxic fumes, and degree of confinement, and emotional factors including degree of competitiveness and degree of contact with the public
• Income – starting with a mid-level income and factoring in growth potential
• Hiring Outlook – expected growth through 2016, income growth potential, and unemployment
• Physical Demands – from sedentary (occasional lifting of 10lbs or less) to Very Heavy (lifting in excess of 100lbs, with frequent lifting of 5lbs or more)
• Stress – considers 23 separate factors that may evoke stress, including quotas, deadlines, working in the public eye, hazards encountered, and meeting the public.

For each of these categories, the methodology provides detailed information on what was considered and how it was weighed.

How do your employees fit into this schema? Are they highly stressed? If so, why – by quotas, speed, and machines and tools used, or by deadlines, win or lose situations, and the amount of initiative required?

Careercast’s methodology provides another lens to help us analyze and think about how our employees see their jobs and their relationship to it.