By Scott White

Most people want work that matters, and they want to be respected for doing it. Career advice should take both seriously. So should the people who run workplaces.

My cousin Michael had two passions: cooking and Chinese. He spent part of his childhood in Taiwan and majored in Chinese in college. Eventually he found a job with a Chinese cheese company selling to American markets. On paper, it was a wonderful fit. He understood the language and culture on both sides of the business, and his knowledge earned him respect.

Something was missing.

He left that job and became the manager of food and meals for people experiencing homelessness in a nearby urban city.

During a visit, I sat at a table with Michael and his mother, my first cousin Joan. She had spent her career teaching elementary school in Virginia, and she loved it. But over time, more and more responsibilities unrelated to teaching were added to her work. To her, those demands conveyed something painful: the people directing her work no longer valued what made her special, the teaching itself.”

She retired.

I told Michael how happy I was that he seemed to have found the sweet spot in a career: doing something meaningful and being respected for doing it. I could see pride fill his face. It seemed I had put words to something he already felt.

I thought I saw a tear well up in Joan’s eye. I couldn’t tell whether it was happiness for her son or recognition of what had slowly been taken from her. Perhaps it was both.

Later, Joan put it in her own words. “After 43 classroom years I still had the passion, desire and energy to teach,” she told me. “What did me in was that the ‘Culture of Testing’ in education continued to escalate, administrator support deeply declined, and respect and appreciation for educators became negligible. Additionally, I realized that I was no longer allowed to exercise creativity and had greatly limited opportunity to positively impact the lives of my students… the end.”

That conversation has stayed with me. More recently, a hospital stay gave me another way to think about it.

With time on my hands and people coming in and out of my room, I started asking questions. When ”

What students should ask

For students considering careers, that is an important addition to the usual questions about salary, credentials, and job prospects. Those questions matter. People need to support themselves. But there are others worth asking, and the best people to ask are those already doing the work:

- What does a normal day actually look like, hour by hour?

- What part of the job do you care about most, and what gets in its way?

- How long do people here tend to stay? What happens to new hires in their first year?

- If you could remove one task from your week, what would it be?

- Does your employer act when someone raises a problem?

Shadowing someone for a day, or talking to a few people who left, will tell you more than a job description.

Why people leave

Attracting people to a profession is only part of the responsibility. We also have to give them reasons to stay.

Healthcare is a timely example. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that healthcare support occupations and healthcare practitioner and technical occupations together will account for almost one-third of new jobs between 2025 and 2035. Both groups are projected to grow ”

“Many don’t. The 2026 NSI retention report, drawing on 527 hospitals and more than 262,000 registered nurses, recorded national RN turnover of 17.6% for 2025, up from the year before. Nearly 23 percent of newly hired nurses leave within their first year. NSI puts the cost of replacing a single bedside nurse at about $60,090. Respect, in other words, isn’t only kind. It’s cheaper than churn.

Teaching tells a more complicated story, and it’s worth telling honestly. RAND estimates that national teacher turnover has fallen from a pandemic peak of 10 percent to just under 7 percent in the 2024–2025 school year, still slightly above the pre-pandemic rate of about 6 percent. That’s real recovery. But turnover numbers can’t capture how many teachers stay while feeling steadily reduced to a task list. Joan wouldn’t have shown up as a statistic until the day she retired.”

“Teaching and nursing can be deeply rewarding, frustrating, and exhausting. The work calls for judgment, patience, and sustained attention to other people’s needs. Loving it does not make those demands disappear.

I have seen plenty of enthusiastic messages in schools and hospitals: celebrations, awards, encouragement to keep going. Appreciation can matter. But some positivity asks people to feel better about conditions their leaders have done too little to improve.

Calling someone a hero does not give that person time to eat lunch.”

“What leaders can actually do

Respect looks different in different jobs. For a school counselor, it might mean removing work that keeps the counselor from seeing students. For a teacher, it might mean protecting time to plan and teach. For a healthcare worker, it might mean a schedule that allows recovery, enough help to do the job properly, and a supervisor who takes a concern seriously.”

“Leaders should ask their employees a straightforward question: What is getting in the way of the work we hired you to do?

Then they should act on the answer.

Where the paperwork comes from

I know this is harder than it sounds. Much of the added paperwork in schools and hospitals doesn’t originate with administrators. It comes from regulators, insurers, accreditors, state mandates, and tight budgets, and a principal or unit manager often can’t simply make it disappear. But leaders aren’t powerless, and “it’s out of my hands” is rarely the whole truth. They can:

- Count the cost. Add up the hours a requirement takes across everyone it touches. A task that looks minor from an administrator’s office may take time away from a student, a patient, or a worker’s family.

- Make additions earn their place. When a new task is added, ask what comes off the list. If nothing does, the work has quietly grown.

- Absorb what they can. Hire clerical and support staff so the paperwork doesn’t land on the people doing the caring and teaching.

- Push back upward. Tell the district, the system, or the legislature what a mandate costs in practice. Leaders are often the only ”

“Having employees’ backs also means listening when they identify a problem, supporting sound professional judgment, and making room to learn. When something goes wrong, accountability should include understanding what happened and helping people do better.

What the nurses I spoke to suggested

The nurses I spoke to offered two concrete ideas.

The first is a full-time technology professional on every floor. Far too much of their time goes to fixing technology, which is outside their training. IV mechanics, monitoring devices, and patients’ television access should not be a nurse’s responsibility.

The second is to recognize and reward them in tangible ways when they go above and beyond. One nurse described walking to work in the snow during last winter’s huge snowstorm, during hours she wasn’t scheduled to work. She worked multiple shifts and was offered a hospital bed to sleep in. If you are asked to get to work without public transportation, work multiple shifts in a row, and sleep at the hospital, appreciation has to mean more than a DAISY Award, the nurse-recognition program many hospitals use. She should be given additional pay, perhaps double, for stepping up in a crisis. She should be paid for all ”

“More broadly, when leaders want to recognize exceptional work, they should consider what would actually help the person receiving the recognition: paid time off with coverage arranged, a meaningful bonus, or a substantial gift card. Ask. An extra day off is not much of a reward if the same work is waiting afterward. And these gestures only count if they sit on top of fair pay and reasonable working conditions. Occasional rewards cannot carry the whole weight of respect.

Don’t hand people a promotion without relief

Working nurses are frequently asked to be charge nurses without a reduced load, though they are often given patients who need less intensive care. In counseling offices, directors are being replaced by “lead counselors” who are expected to carry a full counseling load on top of the director’s responsibilities. In both cases, if you ask front-line workers to take on management responsibilities, you need to reduce their patient or counseling loads.

What I did in schools

I spent much of my career in schools, so I can speak to this from the inside.”

“Teachers need the same priority. At most schools, teachers are given their teaching schedules just before school starts. That neglects teachers and harms students. I ran master schedules for 25 years, and I always gave teachers their schedules before they left for the summer. I asked about their room preferences and met them as best I could as well as minimizing the distance between classes if they did not have their own room. I worked to give teachers the fewest preparations, and the classes they preferred and were strongest in. Proctoring exams, overseeing study halls, and other rote tasks should not fall to certified staff.

As a Director of Guidance, I personally handled all schedule changes for a school of 2,000 students. It helped me keep classes small and balanced and, more importantly, it freed counselors to see students at the start of the year. They could follow up with at-risk students, hold college counseling meetings, and respond to crises. I also used department meetings to train counselors in practical areas such as athletic recruiting and managing transcripts for students returning from intensive outpatient or partial hospitalization programs.

Keeping the connection

Joan’s experience reminds us that an employer can lose someone long before she leaves. Each responsibility that pulled her away from teaching weakened the connection between the work she loved and the job she was being asked to do. Michael found work in which his abilities could serve a purpose he cared about. The people I met in the hospital showed me how many different paths can lead to that same satisfaction.

We should help young people look for it. And we should expect leaders to protect it.

If someone has worked hard to become good at caring for patients, teaching children, or feeding people, give that person the time, support, and respect to do it well. Prove your appreciation on the working day.”