Reading: Are you holding a prestigeous job?

Owl

USA Today offers a view...

• Are you proud of your job?

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.

		New York City firefighters at the St. Patrick's Day Parade. Firefighters are one group that scores well in prestige ratings.
		By Gregory Bull, AP

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. (Related photos: Prestige in making shoes)

RELATED ITEMS 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.

owl

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.

By Steve Woit for USA TODAY Jim Bringham applies a steel toe to a shoe at Red WIng Shoes in Minnesota.

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.