The Top Ten Healthiest Jobs in the UK
It’s something many of us do every day and don’t give a second thought to; work. A lot of us love our jobs, some of us put up with them but have you ever thought about how healthy your job is? After two years living a much more sedentary lifestyle, getting up and getting moving has perhaps never been more important. With that in mind, here at Patient Claim Line we wanted to find out what the healthiest professions really were and how that can have a positive impact on your overall health.
Top of the Jobs
Whilst there might be some obvious contenders for top job, there are many things to consider when deciding just what makes a job healthy. We set out several defining factors that contribute to overall health and then ranked each job role out of ten for each of the criteria. Things like the average amount of paid leave, time spent outdoors and, of course, time spent moving were all assessed. With one being the worst and ten being the best for each criteria, the job with the highest overall score was then recognised as the healthiest.
Keep on moving
Although Fitness Instructor did take the top spot for the number of hours active per week, the overall winner and the UK’s healthiest job is a Postman. Those who kept delivering door to door throughout a pandemic, and who often greet us with a smile on their walk up the road, came out as the healthiest job. They were just ahead of Plumber in second place and Landscape Gardener in third place. It’s no real surprise that the healthiest roles appear to be those that involve manual or physical activity of some kind, but the top three jobs also scored highly for time spent outdoors and average paid holiday. Postman and Plumber also fared well for social interaction.
Staying healthy
It seems evident that maintaining a healthy lifestyle is about more than just how many steps you do in a day. Car Mechanic was rated the fourth healthiest profession in our study and scored highly for wages and the average hours spent working in a week, this is despite scoring a 0 for time spent outdoors. When it comes to stress, it seems the way to alleviate it is to try a career as a Horse Groom. These animal lovers scored a solid nine for stress indicators which pushed them into position five of the healthiest jobs to have. Maybe working with animals isn’t so bad after all!
What makes a job a healthy one?
The factors we considered when looking at how to decide which is the healthiest job were:
- Average amount of paid holiday
- Average hours worked per week
- Average hours being active per week
- Average wages
- Time outdoor
- Stress indicators
- Social interaction
Each of these was given a score out of ten and then these scores were added up to give an overall total for each job. Where one job had the same data as another, they were both scored equally. As you can see from the chart below, Postman scored highly across the board, making it an ideal choice for those wanting to look after their health whilst they work. Manufacturing Operatives were at the bottom of the list with little social interaction and a low score for the average wage.
Here’s the full run down of our healthy jobs research:
Healthy Futures
What we’ve enjoyed the most about conducting this research is seeing how certain jobs have a positive impact on our health. When you think about how much time we spend working it’s a huge bonus to be able to do a job that helps with mobility, joint health and physical and mental well-being. There are so many jobs that are rewarding in multiple different ways and provide important benefits to those who do them. So next time you spot your local postie, give them a smile; it will help keep them healthy and it might make you feel good too.
Why not have a think about how you can make your job more healthy? Even small changes like using your lunch break to go for a walk can all add up.