Pandemic-Related Changes to Short-Term Incentive Plans Only Temporary

Changes to short-term incentives (STIs) prompted by the global pandemic/economy are largely temporary, and some organizations cite the pandemic as the reason for modifying long-term incentives (LTIs). These findings are captured in the "2021 Incentive Pay Practices Study" of publicly traded, privately held, nonprofit, and government organizations conducted by WorldatWork in partnership with Compensation Advisory Partners (CAP). WorldatWork has been conducting incentive pay surveys since 2007 with CAP (via acquisition of Vivient Consulting). The four-part survey provides a sweeping overview of approaches to incentive pay, including types of STI plans; annual incentive plan (AIP) measures, eligibility, targets, and payout frequency; long-term incentive (LTI) prevalence; incentive plan budgets (actual and estimated); and more. READ MORE

Nick Saban says Crimson Tide QB Bryce Young was offered 'almost seven figures' NIL deal

Alabama redshirt freshman quarterback Bryce Young assumes the reins of the most important position on the field this season for the defending national champions, and his star power has a chance to be considerably lucrative for the former five-star prospect. Speaking at the Texas High School Coaches Association convention on Tuesday, Alabama coach Nick Saban revealed that one of his players has been offered a substantial name, image and likeness deal, though he did not specify the player by name. READ MORE

The biggest job wage boom post-pandemic is blue collar, but will it last for workers?

Companies are in desperate need of workers across the country as the economic reopening collides with a tight labor market, but the boom in manual labor job wage growth pre-dates the pandemic.

Donna Kauffman, co-owner of a landscaping design and construction company in Colleyville, Texas, said a tightened labor market has pushed her starting wage up to $13.75 per hour, compared to lower wages in previous years. READ MORE

How Shareholders Can Have a Say on CEO Pay

A company's board of directors is ultimately responsible for how much a chief executive gets paid. But what can shareholders do if they think a chief executive isn't actually earning his or her salary?

New research from Morningstar explores ways to improve the link between CEO pay and shareholder interests. Morningstar equity analysts Joshua Aguilar and Kristoffer Inton looked at methods to better align CEO pay with the value they create for shareholders and better ways to measure their value creation. READ MORE

What to Expect in an Executive Compensation Audit

Income tax withholding is crucial to the general revenues of our federal government, but it turns out that employers have trouble complying with the rules, according to two payroll tax consultants speaking at the American Payroll Association’s 2021 Virtual Congress on July 15.

More than 70% of all the revenue collected by the federal government comes from income tax withholding, said Ken Fitzgerald, a tax manager at Deloitte Tax LLP. READ MORE

Employee-Shareholders, Reasonable Compensation And Employment Taxes

You may have read last week that Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee announced they had reached a deal on a budget resolution that will enable them to bypass Senate Republicans on the way to enacting most of the “social infrastructure” programs called for under the President’s American Families Plan.[i] Significantly, after the announcement, Senator Manchin, who is not a member of the Committee, indicated he would not stand in the way of the budget resolution, thereby practically assuring its passage and the start of the reconciliation budget process. READ MORE

McDonald's, Uber, Lyft forced to get creative to lure workers amid the labor crunch

A white hot economy has created staffing shortages across an increasingly wide range of sectors— prompting some employers to dangle higher wages and creative bonuses to lure badly needed workers into the fold.

U.S. leisure and hospitality jobs, which sustained the brunt of COVID-19 related losses, have spiked in recent months. Those positions accounted for more than half of May’s employment gains, according to the Labor Department’s monthly report.  READ MORE

CEOs made 299 times more than their average workers last year

The difference between CEO and median employee pay grew in 2020 despite the Covid pandemic and ongoing relief efforts.

The average S&P 500 company CEO made 299 times the average worker's salary last year, according to AFL-CIO's annual Executive Paywatch report. Executives received $15.5 million in total compensation on average, marking an increase of more than $260,000 per year over the past decade. At the same time, the average production and nonsupervisory worker in 2020 earned $43,512, up just $957 a year over the past decade. READ MORE

Some CEOs took a pay cut in 2020. Yet they wound up earning more

As the financial blow of the pandemic became a reality in the spring of 2020, Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. furloughed thousands of workers and eliminated 2,100 corporate positions.

The cuts also appeared to hit the C-suite: Chief Executive Christopher Nassetta opted to forgo his entire base salary for the rest of the year, and five other top executives cut their base salary by 50% for four months. READ MORE

Nope, tech salaries aren’t booming like you think they are

A nervous startup founder once confided in me that he just signed a compensation package for a software developer that was twice as rich as his own. The narrative of the pricey tech team is now in the popular imagination. Recent data show that narrative may be outdated.

To many, growth in tech salaries, especially among coveted engineers, has appeared to be nothing short of unrelenting for the last 20 years. For one, salaries have proven fairly recession proof since the 1990s. As software eats the world, the supply of experienced engineers hasn’t kept apace. READ MORE

5 key steps to negotiating a better salary (and what to avoid)

By now you’ve probably heard a lot about about the Great Resignation that’s upon us. According to a study conducted by Microsoft, 41% of workers are contemplating leaving their current job this year. If you’re part of this group, now is a great time to sharpen your negotiating skills, as settling on a competitive salary is a critical final step of the job-search process. Even if you plan on staying at your current workplace for the foreseeable future, the job market might present the perfect opportunity to negotiate a raise.

After all, no matter if you’re a seasoned professional or a recent college grad eager for your first job offer, knowing how to negotiate your salary is vital. Here’s how to get this sometimes-awkward conversation right: READ MORE

Here's What To Know About Hiring Incentives

With a record 9.3 million jobs open in the U.S. as of April, and a workforce in no hurry to get back to work, a growing number of employers are looking to hiring bonuses to fill their ranks. Long a tradition on Wall Street, sign-on bonuses are rare in low-wage work such as fast food, warehousing and food delivery. Now, as the economy has picked up, hiring bonuses are everywhere.

On the jobs site Indeed.com, postings advertising some kind of hiring incentive have more than doubled since last July, according to economist AnnElizabeth Konkel of the Indeed Hiring Lab. Searches for terms such as "hiring bonus" have also doubled, indicating job seekers are intrigued. READ MORE

COVID Related Wage Increases Includible In Regular Rate In FLSA Overtime Case

I have blogged many times about cases where relatively small amounts of compensation, bonus type compensation, are not included when an employer calculates the regular rate for overtime and a class action ensues. Now, this is happening with COVID-related bonuses and extra monies. A recent example is a case where a group of workers have charged that COVID compensation increases were not added into their regular rates. The case is entitled Sanchez v. Gold Standard Enterprises Inc., and was filed in federal court in the Northern District of Illinois. READ MORE

IRS Updates Audit Guide for Nonqualified Plans

The IRS recently updated its Nonqualified Deferred Compensation Audit Techniques Guide. The updated June 2021 Guide (the “2021 Guide”) replaces the previous version published in June 2015 (the “2015 Guide”), and provides a notable expansion of the details surrounding the legal standard applied in reviewing Nonqualified Deferred Compensation (“NQDC”) plans, with an increased emphasis on Internal Revenue Code (“Code”) section 409A (“Section 409A”). READ MORE