Chemical Engineering December 2016 - 18

ADDITIONAL RESULTS FROM THE 2016 CE SURVEY ON CPI SALARIES
Other findings of the CE salary survey include the following:
*
*
*
45.8% of survey respondents said they anticipate higher pay this year than last year, while another 44% said they anticipate about the
same pay. Only 10% said they anticipate lower compensation this year than last year.
92.8% of respondents reported being employed full time, 3.3% reported part-time work and 2.1% said they were unemployed.
30.3% of respondents said their company has experienced greater than 15 retirements of engineers and technical personnel in the past
2 years
* 64% of respondents said their companies were either somewhat or greatly affected by retirements in the last year, versus 13% who said
their employer was not affected at all
(Chicago, Ill.; societyofwomenengineers.swe.org)
recently conducted
a Workplace Experiences Survey
in collaboration with the Center for
Work Life Law at the University of
California (Berkeley; www.berkeley.
edu) Hastings School of Law. The
survey drew over 3,000 respondents
and received almost 900 free-response
comments. Among the aims
of the survey was to examine implicit
gender and racial bias in engineering
workplaces. The survey asked respondents
to what extent they had
experienced any or all of a group of
specific patterns of gender and racial
bias that have been repeatedly documented
in social psychology studies.
The survey found significant gender
gaps for three specific bias patterns,
known as " Prove-it-again "
bias,
" Tightrope "
bias and " Maternal
wall " bias. In Prove-it-again
bias, workers feel that they need to
continually prove themselves in the
workplace to receive the same level
of respect and recognition as their
colleagues. Tightrope bias refers to
the experience of workers needing
to remain within a narrower range of
acceptable behavior than their colConvergence
leagues.
Maternal wall bias has to do
with how having children affects colleagues'
perceptions of work commitment
and competence.
The report states, " Three separate
regression analyses showed
that, after controlling for many other
variables, women still reported more
Prove-It-Again, Tightrope and Maternal
Wall bias [than men]. " Evidence for
a fourth pattern of gender bias, (called
" Tug-of-War " bias) was weaker, the
report notes (see box, p. 19).
The SWE report, including many
open-ended comments from respondents,
can be downloaded at http://
research.swe.org/swe-research/
Salary survey
Another source of CPI workforce data
is the annual salary survey conducted
by Chemical Engineering magazine.
Overall, salary information indicates
CPI engineers have a low rate of unemployment,
and have seen an apparent
rise in salaries. More than 850
CPI professionals responded to the
CE survey in October 2016.
The average annual salary for all
full-time employed
respondents,
including 275 international respondents,
was $108,500. This compares
to $104,000 last year and $109,000
from a similar survey in 2014. For
North American respondents, the
average salary was $131,000, which
is 3.9% higher than the North American
average from 2015 ($126,000).
The CE survey drew many respondents
with considerable work experience
(61.2% with 20 or more years
experience), so the average salary
skewed higher than if the distribution
of work experience was more even
(see box above).
Technology in training
FIGURE 1. 3-D animations, along with augmented-reality and virtual-reality systems, are among the technologies
being increasing employed for CPI worker training
18
Several factors, including the BabyBoomer
retirement wave and an
emphasis on process safety, have
focused attention on training for new
workers. The rapid advance of information
technology (IT) tools and capabilities,
along with rising computing
power, are allowing new IT systems
to play a larger role in worker training.
Two technologies poised for rapid
growth and increasing use in training
contexts are virtual reality (VR)
and augmented reality (AR) systems.
These are increasingly being explored
and applied to improve worker competency,
engagement and safety.
Virtual reality refers to a fully enclosed
3-D interactive space, while
augmented reality refers to mixing
views of the real world with overlaid
information projected on a viewing
device. VR allows workers to fully immerse
in a virtual hazardous environment
to learn without being exposed
to real-world dangers. AR allows employees
access to additional realtime
information overlaid on the real-world,
helping guide proper decisions. For
example, CPI plant employees might
wear AR-equipped safety glasses to
view realtime environmental information,
such as airborne chemical concentrations
or oxygen levels, as they
work in the real-world plant.
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
DECEMBER 2016

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Chemical Engineering December 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering December 2016