What Will it Take to Close the Gender Pay Gap for Good?

Even at the highest-ranking positions in U.S. corporations, it’s clear there's more work to be done to narrow the gender pay gap--and the gender gap overall.

In the topmost roles of the C-suite, men outnumber women by 7 to 1, and the women that do hold these top positions earn only 85 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to the most recent proxy disclosures by Russell 3000 companies. As shown in the chart below, these numbers are only fractionally better than they were five years ago. READ MORE

Overpaying family members is dangerous

Founders and business owners must never toy around with a family member’s remuneration package. It is a very sensitive topic as it involves money. Paying them less than what they are capable of doing is not just downright dangerous but can compromise relationships among siblings and relatives. On the other hand, paying excessive compensation to those who are not deserving can demoralize non-family employees, inevitably leading to higher attrition rate and poor performance. Unless business owners confront pain points over compensation, this problem will continue to sow division within the enterprise. READ MORE

SEC Settlement Invokes Rarely Used Sarbanes-Oxley Act Provision Requiring Reimbursement of Incentive Compensation

On Feb. 2, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a cease-and-desist order settling charges against the former CEO and CFO of WageWorks Inc. (WageWorks, or the Company),[1] stemming from the Company’s restatement of financial results, in which the SEC invoked a rarely used provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to obtain reimbursement of incentive-based compensation earned by the executives.

Section 304 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX 304) permits the SEC to order the disgorgement of bonuses and incentive-based compensation earned by the CEO and CFO in the year following the filing of any financial statement that the issuer is required to restate because of misconduct, and the reimbursement of those funds to the issuer.[2] The provision provides: READ MORE

Time To Dump The ‘Eat What You Kill’ Compensation Model

It’s surprising how often we see professional services firms get in their own way when it comes to driving new business and deepening partnerships with existing clients.

A primary culprit for this is outdated compensation practices that reward individuals over the team. This approach may have worked well 10 or 20 years ago but is no longer aligned with the need for services firms to harness all of their internal resources to better serve their increasingly global and complex clientele. READ MORE

Google to evaluate executives on diversity and inclusion

Alphabet Inc's Google will evaluate the performance of its vice presidents and above on team diversity and inclusion starting this year, the company said on Friday in one of several responses to concerns about its treatment of a Black scientist.

Timnit Gebru, co-leader of Google's ethical artificial intelligence research team, said in December that Google abruptly fired her after she criticized its diversity efforts and threatened to resign. READ MORE

Equity compensation in a pandemic world

COVID-19 has impacted every company. Whether it is a direct impact on short or even long-term revenues or disruption to day-to-day operations, the pandemic's reach is vast. Most businesses have been forced to adapt in some way. For many, it has been a change in where or how they get work done. For some, it is a complete re-imagining of their value proposition to meet wholly new customer needs.

At the center of this period of disruption, and inseparable from your company's ability to navigate it successfully, are your employees. READ MORE

Executive compensation: 2021 and beyond

COVID-19 is causing “unprecedented, negative economic impacts in an accelerated fashion,” comments Alvarez & Marsal. 

“Many experts, furthermore, believe that the coronavirus crisis is just getting started, and that the countermeasures that are causing such negative economic impacts may last not for weeks, but for months or longer. Whether engaged in the airline, hotel, restaurant, physical fitness, cruise line, retail, oil and gas, or any other industry, significant impacts will flow through all sectors, with few, if any, insulated from the downturn.” READ MORE

How to design CEO pay to punish iniquity, not just reward virtue

IF BUSINESS HAD a Moses, “Thou shalt link pay to performance” would be on his tablet. Compensation committees have, however, tended to stick to a narrow reading of the commandment. Whereas they reward good behavior, deterring the bad is an afterthought. Worried that this may lead bosses to adopt a mentality of “heads we win, tails shareholders lose”, boards are rethinking their priorities—partly in response to pressure from regulators and investors, but also to shifting social winds. Perfectly balanced incentives remain as elusive as the promised land. Still, measures designed to ensure that misconduct does not pay are becoming central to the debate about how to craft bosses’ salary plans. READ MORE

Biden’s $15 wage proposal: Job killer or a boon for workers?

President Joe Biden’s effort to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour could provide a welcome opportunity for someone like Cristian Cardona, a 21-year-old fast food worker. Cardona would love to earn enough to afford to move out of his parents’ house in Orlando, Florida, and maybe scrape together money for college.

More than 1,000 miles away in Detroit, Nya Marshall worries that a $15 minimum wage would drive up her labor costs and perhaps force her to close her 2-year-old restaurant, already under strain from the viral pandemic. READ MORE