Telva McGruder, General Motors’ chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer, doesn’t particularly care if job candidates have a degree. Her primary concern is whether applicants have the skills required for a role. 

“An engineering degree is ‘wow’ and very well-respected. I have one myself. But it’s not necessarily the be-all, end-all indicator of someone’s potential,” she told my colleague Phil Wahba in an interview last week. 

McGruder assumed the role of DEI chief in 2020 after spending two decades on the engineering side of GM’s business. She’s since focused on increasing the number of underrepresented employees at the automaker by expanding the perception of what makes for a qualified candidate. Though she acknowledges that higher education credentials are essential for some roles at the company, she believes that narrowly defining what qualified talent looks like inadvertently hinders a company’s diversity efforts.

Stringent degree requirements are known to leave historically marginalized groups in the dark. The gap between white and Black Americans with university degrees notably increased from 18 to 20 percentage points between 2008 to 2018, writes Wahba. McGruder says recognizing such inequities and encouraging leaders to reframe what’s really necessary to successfully perform a job will be essential moving forward.

“There’s not one person at General Motors doing exactly what we hired them to do when they came in,” she says. “When you look at Black and Hispanic people in the U.S., more than 80% don’t have college degrees. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not capable. This frame of thinking opens the door to diversity.”

Read the full interview here. 

Amber Burton
amber.burton@fortune.com
@amberbburton

Reporter's Notebook

The most compelling data, quotes, and insights from the field.

Employers’ average budget for a 2023 merit increase has risen to 3.8%, up from 3.4% this year, according to Mercer’s 2023 U.S. Compensation Planning Survey released Friday. Similarly, the total increase budget for 2023 is 4.2%, compared to 3.8% in 2022. Lauren Mason, senior principal in Mercer's career practice, shares with Fortune how HR executives should begin thinking about compensation planning:

“While it is still early in the budgeting season...HR leaders should be planning for larger merit increases in 2023. HR leaders should build their budgets with consideration of current pay competitiveness and issues with attraction and retention. They should also ensure budgets are flexible to adapt to changing market conditions."

Around the Table

- The CEO of a Florida marketing agency told her employees that Hurricane Ian would be a “nothingburger” and requested that they keep working to have a “good end of quarter.” She’s received backlash. Washington Post 

- Hybrid managers feel the least connected to their company culture because they’re caught in the middle of fully remote and fully in-person work, according to a Gallup poll. 

- Young Americans struggle to navigate the complex health care system when getting health insurance for the first time—even if it’s through their employer. New York Times

- Managers should remember that nobody is perfect, including their employees. Demanding perfection is counterintuitive and unrealistic. Economist 

Watercooler

Everything you need to know from Fortune. 

Home alone. Latchkey kids could make a comeback as a growing number of working parents struggle to find childcare. Eighty-seven percent of working parents say they rely on afterschool programs for childcare because they'd risk losing their jobs otherwise. —Megan Leonhardt

Pay up. Gen Z wants to do away with unpaid internships because they rule out applicants who must financially support themselves. But some fields like social work and nonprofit organizations say they don’t have other options. —Naomi Harris, Jocelyn Gecker

Corporate wishes. More Americans want companies to invest in their workforce and pay a fair living wage, write Ritse Erumi and Martin Whittaker in a commentary for Fortune. The pandemic kicked off a fundamental shift in the expectations employees have for their employers. —Ritse Erumi, Martin Whittaker