Business growth depends on attracting and retaining a workforce with globally diverse values and demographics, according to a study sponsored by Success Factors, an SAP AG company and provider of cloud-based HCM software. With diversity increasingly seen as a strategic business advantage, human resources (HR) executives agree that companies must embrace multicultural and multi-generational needs to meet ongoing recruitment and retention goals. Key findings of the study include:

 

• Eighty-two percent of executives agree that a strategic approach to managing diversity can help access a rich talent pool.

• The integration of millennial- generation employees in the workforce is viewed as a significant diversity challenge. Eighty percent believe strategic changes are needed to accommodate younger employees in the workforce.

• Offering learning and career-development opportunities is a key strategy to manage a diverse workforce. Forty-seven percent support policy initiatives such as mentoring in order to engage diverse talent.

 

HR executives invest in a variety of strategies to provide employees with an engaging work experience, including mentoring new and high-potential employees (47%); exposing high-potential employees to diverse business situations (45%); and providing flexible working arrangements (43%). Key to successful implementations of these strategies is the technology to enable them.

 

“Given the increasing diversity in today’s workforce, both demographically and in terms of values, HR executives must create an environment that allows employees to express themselves individually while maximizing their work skills,” says Gilda Stahl, senior editor, the Economist Intelligence Unit. “The EIU survey demonstrates that executives in every region recognize the scope of this challenge and understand that support at the most senior levels will be required to adjust and productively move forward.”

 

ENGINEERING DOMINATES LIST OF TOP-PAID MAJORS

Seven of the ten top-paid majors for Class of 2013 bachelor’s degree graduates are engineering majors, according to a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). “This isn’t surprising since there is a great deal of competition among employers for engineering majors,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. NACE’s survey found that petroleum engineering once again is by far the highest-paid major for the Class of 2013. This has been the case in NACE’s September 2013 and April 2013 reports, as well.

 

The report shows that the average starting salary for petroleum engineering is nearly $27,000 more than the average starting salary for computer engineering, which is the second highest-paid major for Class of 2013 graduates. Other engineering majors among the top ten are chemical engineering, aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical/electronics and communications engineering, and engineering technology.

 

Meanwhile, computer science, management information systems/business, and logistics/materials management are the non-engineering majors whose average starting salaries were among the highest for Class of 2013 bachelor’s degree graduates.