Department Of Justice Focuses Corporate Compliance Efforts On Executive Compensation

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recent plea agreement with Danske Bank demonstrates increasingly aggressive efforts to incentivize corporate compliance and hold individual executives accountable for corporate misconduct. The DOJ charged Danske Bank, a global financial institution based in Denmark, with defrauding banks in the United States. The plea agreement contains a notable provision that ties executive compensation and bonuses for the bank’s executives to future compliance efforts. The agreement follows recent statements by DOJ officials that companies will be expected to claw back compensation from executives who engage in misconduct. Corporate executives should be on notice that the DOJ is becoming increasingly aggressive in holding corporate executives personally accountable for compliance at their organizations. READ MORE

Highly-Paid Executives May Be Entitled to Overtime Compensation

After an extensive analysis of the Fair Labor Standard Act’s (FLSA) provisions governing overtime pay as applied to highly-paid employees, the Supreme Court has upheld the FLSA’s “salary basis test” – finding that not only is the rate of pay important, so is the basis on which the pay rate is determined. The Court’s holding confirms that even very highly compensated executives may be entitled to overtime. READ MORE

Gen Z's Gender Pay Gap: Young Women Expect Much Lower Salaries Than Men

Gen Z may be known for being progressive, but young people may still be influenced by the gender wage gap when it comes to salary expectations, according to a new report.

Handshake, a college career network, surveyed over 1,800 new college graduates seeking jobs. The results show that even with pay transparency shrinking the gender wage gap in the U.S., Gen Z women respondents have lower salary expectations than men. READ MORE

The 10 Fastest-Growing Tech Salaries By Occupation In 2023

Whether it’s a DevOps engineer or a program analyst, many IT jobs saw an increased salary in 2022 despite extensive layoffs across the industry. In fact, out of 35 jobs researched 17 of them had a salary increase over the last year, according to a new Dice report.

The average tech salary increased by 2.3 percent year over year from $108,857 in 2021 to $111,348 in 2022. And the average annual salary for jobs in the IT market is more than $140,000, according to Dice. READ MORE

Justices decide a day-rate is not a salary

The basic rule is simple: If you earn an hourly wage and you work more than 40 hours in a week, you are probably entitled to “time and a half” overtime pay. But that widely known formula can give way to complexity, as it did in Helix Energy Solutions Group v. Hewitt, a case about whether plaintiff Michael Hewitt is owed overtime pay by his former employer. After parsing detailed regulatory language, a six-justice majority sided with Hewitt; the opinion, authored by Justice Elena Kagan, ultimately turns on the intuitive conclusion that someone who earns a day-rate is not paid on a “salary basis.” READ MORE

The big squeeze: Is pay compression costing you good people?

Over the past few volatile years, the war for talent has meant that companies will often prioritize hiring at any cost. While many have increased salaries for new hires, few gave corresponding increases to current employees—giving rise to a compensation issue called pay compression. Pay compression is what happens when there is little difference between the wages earned by a tenured employee and newcomer, or between a junior- and senior-level employee working within the same job family. If left unchecked, pay compression can lead to higher turnover, lower productivity and the erosion of employee morale and organizational trust. But as we move into an economic downturn, with a greater emphasis on capital efficiency and cost reduction, many companies are encountering a difficult challenge: How can we remediate pay compression problems without an ample budget to give out pay increases? READ MORE

The best way to close gender pay gaps is to find the source of unfair pay

Businesses can close gender pay gaps, reward high performance and improve their compensation strategy by identifying the true source of pay inequity and fairly allocating raises to the most underpaid women, according to new research.

The researchers have developed their approach in collaboration with dozens of businesses around the world ranging from 75 to 130,000 employees, supporting most firms in closing the gender pay gap either immediately or over the course of just a few years. READ MORE

Gen Z women entering the workforce have low pay expectations, showing little has changed since the boomer generation

Gen Z isn’t dodging the pitfalls of pay equity issues as they enter the workforce. 

Women, it seems, fall behind on compensation even before their first professional job, according to a new report from Handshake, a career app aimed at Gen Z. On average, those surveyed in the class of 2023 reported they consider $82,000 a high, achievable starting salary. READ MORE

Justices OK overtime pay for $200,000-a-year worker

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that an energy company employee who earned more than $200,000 a year still qualified for overtime pay under a New Deal-era federal law meant to protect blue-collar workers.

By a 6-3 vote, the justices sided with Michael Hewitt, who was a “tool-pusher” supervising 12 to 14 workers on an offshore oil rig. Hewitt was paid a minimum of $963 for any day he worked as part of an unusual schedule on the oil rig. READ MORE