For Stacey Klimek, vice president of people at PayScale, eliminating surprises, articulating compensation philosophy and providing context for pay decisions is all in a day’s work. And it’s easier to do when you have home-grown comp data and analytical tools at your fingertips. Employee Benefit News recently spoke to Klimek about how a pay data and compensation analytical tool provider can help executives meet corporate goals. Edited excerpts of that conversation follow. READ MORE
New CEO pay ratio rule offers narrow view into executive compensation
The new CEO pay-ratio rule has provided a new view into executive compensation — but more a peephole, limited and slightly distorted.
Public companies have long had to disclose the compensation of their five highest-paid executives, including the CEO. Under the new regulation, public companies need to report the ratio of the CEO’s pay to the pay of the median employee at the company. READ MORE
7 Compensation Strategies for Cash-Strapped Startups
As a startup founder, I’m constantly struggling to recruit top talent without breaking the bank. We can’t always match market salaries, but we need exceptional (read: expensive) talent in order to build from scratch. How do you recruit a developer making well into six figures, or an experienced salesperson with four kids in private school? At our company, Hatch Apps, we’ve learned to get creative. READ MORE
The story behind big pay days, and will Trump's tax cut impact CEO compensation?
Some familiar names and some new faces are atop the list of highest paid chief executives at San Diego County’s publicly traded companies.
Qualcomm’s Steve Mollenkopf was the highest paid local CEO last year, earning $18.8 million based on the Union Tribune’s methodology for calculating executive pay. READ MORE
Will the new pay ratio disclosure help curb what CEOs make?
For decades, politicians, labor unions and pay equity advocates have railed against how much top executives at American companies make.
The outrage has sparked a hodgepodge of disclosures requirements, accounting rules and tax policies aimed at reining in CEO pay – with uneven results. READ MORE
Performance Management: One Simple Secret For Doing It Right
As a leader, it’s your responsibility to continuously communicate expectations, to define duties, and to help people accomplish strategic objectives. That’s your job. But, if you want to be great at performance management, there’s a little secret you need to understand. READ MORE
The SEC takes executive compensation seriously
Why Due Diligence Is Different For Roles Biased To Regular, Variable And Equity Compensation
As an executive onboarding into a new role, due diligence is a critical part of mitigating risk before accepting a job. The three main risks are always organizational, role and personal. But the components of those risks vary across roles with different compensation compositions. READ MORE
Why the uproar over executive pay isn't entirely warranted
For those inclined to view big business as irresponsible, poorly governed and out of touch, CEO compensation provides the biggest and juiciest target. READ MORE
Trying to Ensure Fair Pay, Employers Are Changing Policies
Sixty percent of U.S. employers are planning to take some action this year to prevent bias in hiring and pay decisions. READ MORE
Employers Are Finally Ready to Talk About How Much They Pay
Up until last week, none of the 170 employees working at Verve, a marketing company, knew what anyone else made. Now, everyone’s salary is listed on an internal document for everyone to see. READ MORE
The growing complexity of compensation strategies
As employers come under increasing pressure to boost pay for performance and employ fair pay strategies in the workplace, they’re rethinking the programs they already have in place, according to a new survey from Willis Towers Watson. READ MORE
Stock-based compensation brings elaborate rules
Large employers, particularly those whose stock is publicly traded, often grant stock to their employees. Sometimes these stock awards are made broadly available, but they may be narrowly tailored to key employees. READ MORE
Which is better for business owners: compensation or dividends?
One of the major changes in the tax law enacted last December in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was the creation of a new deduction for “qualified business income.” As a general rule, this deduction allows individuals who are either sole proprietors or who own interests in businesses that are formed as limited liability companies, partnerships, or S corporations to deduct from their gross income an amount that may be as high as 20 percent of their share of that entity’s income. READ MORE
What Does "Compensation" Mean Under the 401(k)/403(b) Plan?
One of the Top 10 Mistakes made by 401(k)/403(b) plan sponsors is failing to follow the definition of “compensation” under the terms of the relevant plan document. Compensation can be defined several different ways for plan administration purposes. For example, compensation may be defined as W-2 wages, which would include bonuses for purpose of making elective deferrals. Using the example, if an employer fails to allow the employer to defer off a year-end bonus (part of W-2 compensation), the plan has experienced an operational error, which affects its tax-qualified status. READ MORE
Can anything bring CEO pay back down to earth?
Because of a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act, this year public companies started reporting the ratio of their chief executives’ pay to the median earnings of employees. This offered a stark new way to see income inequality in action. READ MORE
CEO Pay Ratio Disclosure: A Look at Year One Results
During the 2018 proxy season, publicly held companies began disclosing their CEO pay ratio, a Dodd-Frank rule that requires them to calculate the ratio between the compensation level of the median employee and the company’s CEO. Michael Kesner, a retired principal and consultant to Deloitte Consulting LLP, and Tara Tays, a managing director with Deloitte Consulting LLP, discuss the findings of a recent Deloitte analysis of CEO pay ratios based on data gathered from pay disclosures of 294 S&P 500 companies.¹ They also explain some of the challenges initial filers faced in complying with the pay ratio disclosure requirements and what companies can do to prepare for Year Two. READ MORE
FASB Issues Simplifications to Accounting for Nonemployee Share-Based Payments
Senate Appropriators Ignore Trump's Proposed Pay Freeze, Back 1.9% Raise for Feds
A Senate panel on Tuesday advanced spending legislation that would provide federal civilian employees with an across-the-board 1.9 percent pay increase in 2019, contrary to the White House’s request for a pay freeze. READ MORE
What's really going on with wages in America
Take-home pay picked up in 2015 and 2016, but it has since flattened out at annual growth rates that remain substantially below the 5% that workers enjoyed prior to the Great Recession.
There are lots of theories for why that's the case. But there are also lots of different ways of looking at wages themselves, and each data set can tell a different story. READ MORE