CEO Pay Trends During the Pandemic Show More Than Meets the Eye

CEO pay fell in 2020 at the largest U.S. companies, according to a new report from Equilar. The Equilar 100, an annual study of the 100 largest U.S. companies by revenue to file a proxy statement prior to March 31, found that total CEO compensation was $15.5 million at the median, down 1.6% from $15.7 million in the 2019 study.

Meanwhile, median revenue for the largest 100 companies to file by March 31, 2021 was $37.4 billion, up slightly from $37.3 billion the year prior. READ MORE

Compensation And Benefits Considerations In The American Rescue Plan Act Of 2021

The American Rescue Plan Act of 20211 (the ARPA or the Act) was signed into law on March 11, 2021. Among myriad other topics, the Act builds upon, modifies, or otherwise addresses the relief promulgated in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA).2 In addition, the Act includes several new provisions in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that impact employee benefits and executive compensation. READ MORE

Berkshire directors rebuked over pay for likely Buffett successors

The shareholder adviser ISS is recommending investors withhold their votes from four directors at Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in a rebuke of the company’s executive pay policies. The refusal to back the re-election of four members of Berkshire’s compensation committee reflects concern over the pay packages awarded to vice-chairs Greg Abel and Ajit Jain, who ISS said earn some of the largest base salaries of any executives at US public companies. READ MORE

Still weighing vaccine incentives? Here’s what 12 employers have done

COVID-19 vaccination is vital to end the pandemic, but it’s not proving to be an easy task. Although vaccines are here and are becoming more widely available, skepticism and hesitation still surround the shots, and scores of Americans say they do not plan to get vaccinated. That’s where employers come in.

Employers are widely seen as essential in encouraging employees to get inoculated and boost vaccination numbers across the country. READ MORE

Kyrsten Sinema Wears 'Fuck Off' Ring After Controversial $15 Minimum Wage Vote

Democratic Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema posted a photo of herself brandishing a ring that read "Fuck Off" a little over a month after she voted against a measure to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The Arizona Democrat, 44, posted the picture on Instagram on Sunday as she continues to face a backlash from within her own party for voting against the $15 minimum wage, and for teaming up with Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) on an $11 proposal. READ MORE

The Pandemic’s Effect on Measured Wage Growth

Usually when we see rising wages, the economy is growing. So how is it that April 2020 – the month when the U.S. economy lost 21 million jobs – saw some of the fastest wage growth in recent memory? And if wage growth slows in the coming months, or even goes into negative territory, what would that tell us about the economic recovery? We explain in this blog why we believe that two measurement issues—composition of the labor force and base effects—explain these trends and why average wage data will be easy to misinterpret in the coming months. READ MORE

Shareholder groups urge 'no' vote on GE exec pay

The two most influential proxy advisory groups came out last week against General Electric Co.’s compensation packages for CEO Larry Culp and other top executives, taking particular umbrage with last year’s changes to Culp’s employment agreement.

Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. and Glass Lewis & Co. both advised GE shareholders to cast “nay” votes on the Boston-based company’s executive compensation at its annual meeting May 4. The pay-package vote is non-binding. READ MORE

Tech billionaires are staying “very, very quiet” on proposals to tax their wealth

Billionaires like Bill Gates have long said that they, theoretically, would be in favor of paying much more money in personal taxes.

And yet Gates and some of the wealthiest people in the world are staying silent on a series of active proposals that would do just that, sidestepping a legislative package in their home state of Washington that targets them specifically. READ MORE

CEO who gave employees $70K minimum wage says revenue tripled 6 years later

A CEO who cut his own salary to give all of his employees a minimum wage of at least $70,000 per year says his company's revenue has tripled since he made the move. 

"6 years ago today I raised my company's min wage to $70k. Fox News called me a socialist whose employees would be on bread lines," Dan Price, the CEO of Seattle-based credit card processing company Gravity Payments, tweeted Tuesday. "Since then our revenue tripled, we're a Harvard Business School case study & our employees had a 10x boom in homes bought."  READ MORE

How Organizations Can Recover from the Pandemic’s Impact on Pay Equity and Transparency

The gender pay gap has taken a hit during the pandemic, with economists predicting it may take nearly 20 years to recover to pre-pandemic levels of equality. At the same time, the workplace has been completely transformed, likely for good, with changes resulting from an overnight switch to remote work and fluctuating economic uncertainty.

But how have these changes impacted worker perceptions of their employers, and where do employees’ priorities stand moving forward? READ MORE

Closing the gap: Examining executive compensation packages for women

While women have made progress with representation in the C-suite and on company boards, there is still a big gap. According to McKinsey & Company's 2020 Women in the Workplace Study, the number of women serving in the C-suite has increased from 17% in 2015 to 21% in 2020. However, when you look at the top C-suite roles, named executive officers (NEOs) for proxy reporting, the gap enlarges to seven to one, according to Morningstar research on proxy disclosures of the Russell 3000 companies. READ MORE

New Legions of Remote Workers Puts Geographic Pay Policies in the Spotlight

Geographic pay policies, a.k.a. localized compensation, are in flux. Of the 62% of organizations with existing geographic pay policies, 44% are considering modifying or have recently modified their policies due to the increase of full-time remote work, according to WorldatWork's Geographic Pay Policies Study. With 67% of employees expecting their compensation to reflect their location, geographic pay is a critical issue for employers 1) striving to improve the workforce experience and 2) recruiting/retaining top talent. Pay policy prevalence, geographic pay philosophies, determinants of employees' geographic pay location, modification approaches, remote work flexibility, and limiting factors, among other variables, were measured. Organizations and employees were surveyed separately. READ MORE

Executives' Pay Deters Big Oil From Acting On Climate Change

The way executives at large oil companies are paid encourages these companies to extract more fossil fuels, a study has suggested, as reported by The Guardian, who said it was given exclusive access to the findings.

The study came from the Climate Accountability Institute, an organization that says about itself that it "engages in research and education on anthropogenic climate change, dangerous interference with the climate system, and the contribution of fossil fuel producers' carbon production to atmospheric carbon dioxide content." READ MORE

5 Tips For Mastering Pay-For-Performance Compensation

The concept of “paying for performance” is central to sales and service organizations. Examples include paying retail associates based on product sales, trainers based on number of classes taught, salespeople based on quota achievement, insurance agents for policies sold, and so forth. Trillions of dollars are spent every year on commission-based pay. Research suggests this is money well spent. Except when it isn’t. To quote Dr. Barry Gerhart, “Pay-for-performance seems capable of producing spectacularly good results. It can likewise produce spectacularly bad results.” READ MORE

Meet the Highest Paid CEO in S&P 500, Paycom’s $211 Million Man

Move over, Elon Musk and Tim Cook. There is a new name breaking into the list of the highest-paid chief executives: Chad Richison, the founder and CEO of payroll processor Paycom Software Inc.

The Oklahoma City billionaire last year was awarded compensation valued at $211 million by Paycom, the company disclosed in the annual proxy statement it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week. READ MORE