Media Coverage

Think there’s no such thing as a high-paying, low-stress job?

Think again.

Career information expert Laurence Shatkin, Ph.D., compared average salaries and stress levels of the 767 occupations identified by the U.S. Department of Labor to identify jobs with that perfect combination of high pay and low stress, and it turns out there are plenty.

The “stress tolerance” for each job is a rating on a scale from zero to 100, where a lower rating signals less stress. It measures how frequently workers must accept criticism and deal effectively with high stress on the job. The data was gathered from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Occupational Information Network.

Here are 24 jobs that pay more than $70,000 a year, on average, and earned a stress tolerance rating of 70 or lower, in order from lowest to highest stress score...

Operations Research Analysts

Stress tolerance: 63.0

Average annual salary (2014): $82,940

What they do: Use advanced mathematical and analytical methods to help organizations investigate complex issues, identify and solve problems, and make better decisions.

Education requirements: Many entry-level positions are available for those with a bachelor’s degree, but some employers prefer to hire applicants with a master’s degree or Ph.D.

Stress tolerance is measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Occupational Information Network, with lower scores indicating less stress on the job.

Rules that encourage cooperative behavior lead people to develop altruistic responses even in new contexts, a new Yale-led research found.

This spillover effect suggests it is possible for organizations or even entire cultures to foster “habits of virtue,” said David Rand, assistant professor of psychology and economics at Yale and senior author of the paper appearing in the journal Management Science.

During the recent INFORMS Healthcare conference in Nashville (see sidebar), Mike Fabel, a senior health systems engineer with the Mayo Clinic, and Victoria Jordan, PhD, executive director of Strategic Management and Systems Engineering with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, sat down to discuss their role in the healthcare delivery system.

“I have a manufacturing background,” said Fabel. “We just have a different way of viewing things as far as looking for waste in the process. I think we bring a simplified, team-based effort to looking for waste.”

Fabel added that in his experience, physicians, nurses and other team members have the necessary skills to rethink the status quo but need the guidance, facilitation and tools the engineering department brings to the table to help them map out new solutions.

Even pirates have their redeeming qualities.

The counterfeiter might be a profit-sapping scourge to many designers, but recently published research from a trio of academics shows that fakes can also push brands to up their game — particularly in terms of aesthetics.

A study published in Market[ing] Science academic journal looked at 31 brands that sold fashion leather and sport shoes in China from 1993 to 2004. The Chinese market proved to be something of a petri dish to the researchers, since it saw a major influx of counterfeits after 1995, when the government pivoted away from the enforcement of footwear trademarks to respond to problems in other sectors, including gas explosions and food poisonings.

“Established companies don’t sit idly by while they are copied shamelessly,” said Yi Qian, a professor at University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business, who cowrote the study. “They react by improving their products to set themselves apart from their illegal competitors.”

A new study finds that once a business responds to a specific grievance on Twitter, it could also open the floodgates to more criticism. But that doesn't mean brands should clam up when an issue arises. Twitter can be a helpful tool for companies hoping to regain the trust of unhappy patrons, and responding to customers on public forums is better than not responding at all. In fact, reaching out can greatly improve the way people think about a company.

"It’s still worthwhile to respond to complaints, because the net effect is still effective. [People] are more likely to complain because they expect the company will help [them] more,” study co-author Liye Ma, a professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, told The Huffington Post. 

The study, published in the journal Marketing Science, a branch of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, focused on customers’ perceptions of companies and how the relationship changes over time.