OT: Job Prestige

[Guest guest]

Hi y'all,

 

Interesting this is methinks.. trivia .. but interesting. :-) Butch

 

Are You Proud of Your Job?

By Del Jones, USA TODAY

 

Think it doesn't matter what that stranger at the party thinks when you

tell him or her what you do for a living? Think again.

 

These days, you can speak proudly if you're a firefighter or a

scientist. Those are among the professions to which the public still

assigns great prestige. But a little embarrassment is understandable

when you say you're an accountant or real estate agent. As important as

those professions may be, there is a less than 1 in 10 chance that the

person you're talking to believes your job carries great prestige, and

according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive, the prestige of

most occupations continues to spiral down.

 

Occupations with the most prestige:

 

Scientist ................. 52%

Doctor .................... 52%

Firefighter ............... 48%

Teacher ................... 48%

Military Officer .......... 47%

Nurse ..................... 44%

Police Officer ............ 40%

Priest/Minister/Clergy .... 32%

Member of Congress ........ 31%

Engineer .................. 29%

Athlete ................... 21%

Architect ................. 20%

Business Executive ........ 19%

Lawyer .................... 17%

Entertainer ............... 16%

Union Leader .............. 16%

Actor ..................... 16%

Banker .................... 15%

Journalist ................ 14%

Accountant ................ 10%

Stockbroker ............... 10%

Real Estate Broker/Agent .. 5%

 

Source: Harris Poll of 1,012 adults conducted Aug. 10-15, 2004.

 

The millions of us working jobs held in lesser regard often convince

ourselves that job satisfaction has nothing to do with what other people

think. Journalists, in the throes of scandal over fictitious sources and

plagiarism, may be particularly expert at that. They also may be wrong.

 

According to an increasing body of evidence, how much prestige the

outside world assigns to a job plays a sizable role in job satisfaction.

That could portend consequences, not only for the well-being of workers

and the success of companies, but also for the health of the economy.

 

• Teachers have made a prestige leap in the eyes of the public. In 1977,

29% of us assigned great prestige to that job. By 2004, it was 48%,

according to a separate Harris survey sponsored by the MetLife

Foundation. During roughly the same period, the percentage of teachers

who say they are very satisfied with teaching as a career rose from 40%

to 57%.

 

• An unscientific online survey of 865 physicians by The Doctors, a

medical-liability insurance carrier, found that 70% would not encourage

their children to become doctors, an about-face from when their parents

all but herded them into medical school. Since 1977, Harris says, the

prestige the public assigns to medical doctors has slipped from 61% to

52%, and the nation may face a shortage of 85,000 to 200,000 doctors in

15 years.

 

• Two million manufacturing jobs were lost in the last recession, yet

the National Association of Manufacturers forecasts a shortage of 10

million skilled manufacturing workers by 2020, largely because students

in middle school through college describe such jobs as " repetitious, "

" tedious, " " boring, " " dark " and " dirty. " That career would be like

serving a life sentence or being on a chain gang, they say, according to

a report called " Keeping America Competitive: How a talent shortage

threatens U.S. manufacturing "

 

Last year, the Association for Manufacturing Technology brought 6,095

students and 578 educators to see a modern plant. The students left

impressed, says AMT President John Byrd, but he adds that parents must

be shown the prestige of a high-tech manufacturing job, or they steer

their children away.

 

During his tenure as CEO of Symmetry Medical from 1996 to 2002, Byrd

thought he was making an impression when he took high school guidance

counselors on a tour of a state-of-the-art factory. But he still

remembers one remarking that he would not want his son working there

because he'd rather see him in a shirt and tie.

 

Falling esteem

 

Unfortunately for most of us, there are very few professions that have

not experienced an erosion in prestige during the past 30 years. While

the percentage of those who assign teachers great prestige has risen

since 1977, lawyers have slipped from 36% to 17%, priests and ministers

from 41% to 32%, engineers from 34% to 29%, athletes from 26% to 21% and

journalists from 17% to 14%.

 

Keeping employees satisfied and productive is the age-old management

conundrum on which the experts rarely agree. The prestige/satisfaction

link is no exception. Doctors, for example, conclude that the reason

they no longer want their children to be doctors is not due to slumping

prestige but to the spiraling cost of malpractice insurance.

 

A few years ago, AT & T was perhaps the most prestigious place to work.

That is no longer the case, but former employee Bruce Woods, a 30-year

veteran of AT & T and its subsidiaries as an engineer and manager before

retiring in 1999, says AT & T's prestige collapse had little impact on his

job satisfaction.

 

He says wartime generals have the prestige, but the troops that

liberated Europe and the Pacific Islands in World War II have basked in

satisfaction their entire lives. At AT & T, it was unmotivating to see

senior officers do stupid things, Woods says, but " real satisfaction

comes from accomplishments, especially accomplishments which require

hard work. "

 

However, much of that troop satisfaction was likely due to being on the

winning side of the war. Similarly, job prestige and satisfaction may

also rely on business success, which can be ephemeral. Consider the

prestige of working at Enron in 1999 vs. 2001.

 

Scientists still have the highest prestige of any profession. Even so,

it has fallen 14 percentage points since the first survey in 1977, and

likely more since the 1969 moon landing. Scientists often have lonely,

isolated jobs, but those with the most satisfaction tend to be working

on something with a potential to make a difference, such as a drug for

cancer, or something that helps solve the energy crisis, says Curt

Carlson, CEO of SRI International, a non-profit that employs 2,000

scientists and researchers and is known as the birthplace of the

computer mouse.

 

That observation is supported by University of Michigan research

presented last year at the American Psychological Society convention. It

found that the most satisfied workers were those who felt they had a

positive impact on others, to the point that many firefighters wished

they could fight more fires.

 

Marcus Buckingham is author of The One Thing You Need to Know and an

expert on employee satisfaction and productivity, known as employee

" engagement. " He says there are plenty of engaged workers doing the most

menial work. He learned that years ago when he studied the best hotel

maids at the Walt Disney resorts. Likewise, some of the most disengaged

people he has encountered are those at the very top of companies.

 

There is nobility in every profession, Buckingham says, and the key is

not to be mediocre. Show him a teacher who settles for mediocre, he

says, and he'll show you a teacher who is not satisfied.

 

Loews Hotels operates 20 hotels, including the upscale Regency in New

York, Beverly Hills Hotel in California and Le Concorde in Quebec City.

CEO Jon Tisch says prestige hotels create a sense of prestige in

employees if only because they are serving famous guests. More mundane

hotels probably require more employee incentives, he says, adding that

Loews' advertising campaigns are often aimed as much at boosting the

prestige of employees as they are at enticing customers.

 

Many companies believe job prestige is important, but they are at a loss

for strategies. Prestige relies largely on what people outside the

company think, which can't be influenced by raises, perks and strokes.

 

Best Buy, a company long on the cutting edge of employee engagement,

recently invited Jake Rockwell, a part-time salesman in Murray, Utah, to

sing a rap song in front of 2,000 store managers and top brass from

district, regional and corporate headquarters. He got a standing ovation

and, no doubt, shot up the prestige ladder. But the prestige boost was

internal.

 

Manufacturers recognize that their jobs need an external prestige boost.

One of the few solutions being considered is to have Congress pass

National Manufacturing Day, a sort of " take your child to work day " in

which teachers would take students to a modern manufacturing plant to

show them that it's not prison.

 

Making a difference

 

Some of the nation's most discontented workers are truck drivers. They

have a 126% annual turnover rate, according to the American Trucking

Associations. The ATA says it is instilling prestige with its Highway

Watch program that has drivers on the lookout for terrorism and other

suspicious activity. Drivers also exchange e-mail geography lessons

with elementary school students via a program called Trucker Buddy.

 

Jesse Davis, a driver for Melton Truck Lines, once worked as a

firefighter. But, speaking from a cell phone while driving somewhere in

Pennsylvania, Davis says he gets prestige from the children who wave at

him from the back seats of cars and take pictures of him at truck stops.

 

Other companies have made attempts at making their jobs more prestigious:

 

• 7-Eleven's three-decade sponsorship of the annual Jerry Lewis MDA

Labor Day Telethon is partly meant to generate pride and prestige in

working for the company. But tending to prestige can be negated by a

single Jay Leno joke about 7-Eleven employees, says spokeswoman Margaret

Chabris, who dashes off letters whenever the company feels it has been

the butt of an unfair joke. She says once when she answered the phone,

it was Leno with an apology.

 

• RailAmerica, an 1,860-employee company that operates short-line

railroads, hired a public relations firm to inform the media that its

employees have rescued at least five people from burning cars and frigid

water during the past two years.

 

• New employees at Red Wing Shoes receive a welcome box that includes

photographs of Red Wing boots in the possession of President Eisenhower

and Queen Elizabeth, an effort to give new hires a historic sense of

prestige. Red Wing is one of the last to manufacture footwear in the

USA, and Chief Operating Officer Dave Murphy says the company's success

is due largely to the pride Red Wing's 2,100 employees — including 1,450

in manufacturing — have in making a product with prestige.

 

" Red Wing boots don't show up on American Idol, " Murphy says. But Red

Wing manufacturing employees are likely to be at parties with other

blue-collar workers, and everyone at those parties knows Red Wing,

Murphy says.

 

" There's also a sense of pride, and we're able to buck the system, " to

be competitive in manufacturing in Minnesota, Kentucky and Missouri

rather than China, Murphy says.

 

There is little correlation between prestige and money. Harris found

that firefighters, teachers, nurses and police officers all score well

on prestige, while the prestige of professional athletes has fallen as

their incomes have risen.

 

A survey released in February by the Conference Board said that job

satisfaction has declined during the past nine years. Yet 17% of those

making less than $15,000 a year say they are very satisfied with their

jobs, vs. 14% of those who make more than $50,000 a year.

 

Carlson, the CEO of SRI and employer of scientists, says prestige can be

elusive and its origins difficult to explain. For example, there is

prestige in geography, he says. A researcher who isn't in Silicon Valley

is a rung down on the prestige ladder, much like an actor who does not

live in Hollywood, he says.

 

© Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.