I HAVE met many parents who, in recent years, want their children to take up actuarial science. I know people who are actuaries and they are well-paid, contented individuals who can find work anywhere in the world.
So it must be a joy for these people to read a report in The Star on Jan 7 that the best job in the world currently is that of an actuary.
Okay, maybe not in the world, but certainly in the United States, as rated by
www.careercast.com, a well-regarded job search portal.
The worst job? According to the list, that would go to the roustabout, someone who performs routine physical labour and maintenance on oil rigs and pipelines, both on and offshore. You can also find taxi driver and garbage collector on this list.
By coincidence, there was also an article in the same issue of The Star about Ben Southall, who became an international celebrity when he won the Best Job In The World contest.
Southall, if you recall, beat 34,000 entrants, including a Malaysian who was on the shortlist, to get this posting on picturesque Hamilton Island off the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland.
But if you think he did nothing but laze around the beach all day with his girlfriend, consider this. According to the report, Southall worked seven days a week and up to 19 hours a day. He visited 90 “exotic locations”, made 47 video diaries, and gave more than 250 media interviews – including a chat with Oprah Winfrey.
He also posted more than 75,000 words in 60 separate blogs – the equivalent of a small novel (or 150 Monday Starters) – uploaded more than 2,000 photos, and “tweeted more than 730 times”.
And you know what? He has done such a good job that his contract which ended on Jan 1 has been renewed.
Tourism Queensland has just offered him a new 18-month, six-figure (in Australian dollars, of course) contract to promote the state worldwide.
Well, these two stories did get me thinking about what really are the best and worst jobs in our country.
Are the best jobs the ones that pay the most and give you the most company benefits and media publicity? I don’t think so.
I have met my share of people in the limelight and they often lament about their stress level and what they would give to be able to have a good night’s sleep and not feel like they belong to the company 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
I am not surprised that stress plays a critical factor in how one assesses one’s job. In the careercast survey, the methodology used was to tabulate points based on the five core areas that are key to every job, and stress is one of them. Apart from stress, the other areas are environment, income, outlook and physical demands.
Some of us may have routine jobs that involve waking up, driving through a jam, frantically looking for a parking lot, sitting in a cubicle, working on file after file, playing Solitaire in between, taking a teh tarik break, working on file after file, and then heading home.
I am no management guru, but I believe that one of the key components to making a job great is that we are able to have a sense of belonging in the place where we work.
It does not matter whether we are a long-time worker nearing retirement or a fresh graduate. It does not matter whether we are struggling with a new work culture because our previous place of work is so different from the one we just moved into. It does not matter whether we are the so-called invisible workers that our busy bosses never take notice of.
What is important is that we know that our work matters, that there is a sense of ownership and what we do contributes to the greater good of the company. It helps that the people around us, from our colleagues to our bosses, make us feel that we belong. Whatever we do, we are appreciated. Nobody tells us that we are newbies and that we should behave like them or forever be seen as outsiders.
We celebrate our differences and work together as one, like different parts of the same body. In that way, we slowly overcome our daily trepidations and feel that we truly belong.
And that would make any job the best job in the world.
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