SAP
Focus on a Member - May 2008
Every month, CSR Europe introduces one of its members' key CSR focus areas and activities through a brief interview. This month, James Farrar, Vice President, Corporate Citizenship from SAP AG, discusses the challenges of attracting and retaining talent in a highly competitive labor market.
In the software industry, innovation is fundamental to a company's success. How do you address the existing and future challenges of finding and retaining employees with the right skills?
Having the best people means we have the right people at the right time in the right place in the right position. This begins with attracting the most qualified candidates through efforts in promoting SAP as an employer of choice across the globe. Once they have joined the company we do everything possible to develop and retain our people, helping them be the best they can.
Not only must we attract new talent to SAP, but it is equally important to motivate and train our current employee base. We look to create an environment where employees feel a strong connection to the company and are rewarded for high performance in numerous ways. Employees must be driven to success through challenging jobs, educational and development possibilities throughout the company, and a competitive compensation and benefits system that rewards outstanding performance.
SAP is proud to be at the leading edge in terms of what we provide our employees and the work environment we offer.
Education is an essential part of SAP's approach to community engagement. Could you give some examples of your work in this area?
As a software company, the only asset we have is the intellectual capacity of our employees. Our entire business depends on an educated workforce. We believe an investment in the skilled workers of tomorrow begins with support for the children of today. By building healthy minds and healthy bodies through programs like the School Feeding programs of the UN World Food Programme, we are making an investment in the physical welfare of needy children.
In addition, through our support for the FIRST LEGO League, we seek to inspire children and young people to pursue interests in science and technology.
We have also made large investments in our SAP University Alliances Program, a college-based curriculum that provides hands-on education in SAP products to juniors and seniors in institutions of higher learning across the globe, equipping them with skills in demand by businesses around the world that gives students access to state of the art software and prepares them for their future careers. And at the top of our engagement for education, we support the Nobel Prize winners meeting at Lake Konstance (Bodensee).
SAP is one of the companies leading the CSR Laboratory on Demographic Change. Could you tell us more about this Laboratory and SAP's interest in it?
Demographic Change is one of the major topics on the sustainability agenda and one of the many challenges companies face. Although SAP currently does not face the problem of an "ageing workforce", we compete on a highly competitive labor market for the best talent, and must think long term. More than 80 percent of our employees are university graduates. As populations shrink the war for top talent will be even more ferocious.
At SAP, we very much support stakeholder inclusiveness and co-innovation, so we seek to tackle the demographic challenge together with other companies and partners. Every company involved has some experience with demographic projects in Germany. Together we want to broaden the perspective to a European - or even better global - perspective.
Until now, most companies have had little knowledge about how demographic developments affect their location decisions. At SAP, lab leaders decided to fund an academic project that provides more reliable information on European regions, as regional aspects are very important for companies' location planning.
One part of this project is an online tool that allows companies and institutions worldwide deeper insight into European regional demographic change and regional demographic location risks.
Another element of the Lab is a dialogue workshop series that is held in various European countries. These sessions provide the opportunity to experience different strategies in politics and business in Europe. The results help to benchmark our own position and to grow our own strategy.
The work of the Lab allows SAP to develop enhanced strategic workforce planning solutions and tailor made HR strategies to tackle different situations in different regions. For more information about the Lab, its participants, structure and tools, please go to www.demographicchange.info.
SAP joined CSR Europe in the beginning of this year. How do you see your role as a member of the European business network for CSR?
SAP continually seeks the exchange of ideas and best practice, and believes that the best approach is to "co-innovate" solutions with other concerned stakeholders just as we do in our core business. Therefore, we are very interested in the stakeholder dialogue that CSR Europe undertakes and SAP would like to contribute to and profit from the expertise that is brought forward in the CSR Europe working groups on different themes.
About SAP
SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software (enterprise resource planning and related applications), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 47,800 customers in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE. Read more at www.sap.com.
More information
For more information about CSR Europe activities in which SAP engages, please contact Carien Duisterwinkel on cd@csreurope.org.
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