Are America’s CEOs overpaid?

“We’re fed up with falling behind,” declared Shawn Fain, the boss of America’s United Auto Workers (UAW), last month after the union began a campaign of intermittent strikes at Ford, General Motors (GM) and Stellantis, America’s “big three” carmakers. A month in, the two sides are still at loggerheads. Jim Farley, Ford’s chief executive, has argued that the 36% pay rise over four years demanded by the striking workers would cripple his business. The UAW has countered that the average pay of the big three’s CEOs is 40% higher than it was in 2019, compared with 6% for the union’s members, which is well below inflation. Last year Mr Farley raked in $21m in pay, Carlos Tavares, his counterpart at Stellantis, $25m and Mary Barra of GM, $29m. The average full-time UAW member made less than $60,000. READ MORE

How an ‘Effort-Reward Imbalance’ Can Make Work Miserable

Life isn’t fair.

It’s a phrase so often repeated that it has become a cliché. But studies have shown that humans are hard-wired to want their fair share, as are other animals that have cooperative relationships, like monkeys, birds and wolves.

In one famous experiment, researchers trained two capuchin monkeys to hand them tokens in exchange for a cucumber snack. At first, the animals were happy with this arrangement — that is, until one of the monkeys received grapes instead, which are considered far more delicious. The other monkey, who continued to receive cucumbers, looked enraged, shook the walls of her enclosure and hurled the cucumbers out of reach. READ MORE

Negotiating the best compensation and executive perks package

The unemployment rate in the United States has remained below 4 percent since January 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Competition for workers is high across many sectors. Anecdotally, demand for executives at various levels in the Lehigh Valley is consistently strong. This market dynamic is one reason that compensation and perks are key components of any executive’s decision to join a new company or remain with their current employer.  

 Company perks and compensation packages should be a key decision-making factor for any executive because those packages can have a huge impact on their financial future. A 2021 report from Harvard Business Review analyzed compensation of top executives at all Russell 3000 companies and found that only 18 percent of their compensation was base salary; the remaining 82 percent was variable. Those variables, such as stock options, are precisely what’s laid out in compensation and perks packages. READ MORE

Caution Advised: Use of DEI Performance Goals in Incentive Compensation

Recent court decisions have ruled that certain race-based college admissions programs violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. While these decisions do not apply directly to private employers, some observers expect them nevertheless to encourage more scrutiny of affirmative action policies or practices in the private sector. READ MORE

Beyond the paycheck: The key to building a thriving workplace goes beyond salaries

Today’s news is filled with stories highlighting salary figures, from sky-high CEO compensation packages to boards trying to hide CEO pay increases during periods of austerity, to governments interfering with collective bargaining over wage increases and unions securing pay hikes.

Some provinces, including Ontario, Alberta and Nova Scotia, are also mandated to release annual sunshine lists of public sector workers who earn above $100,000 — all of which might suggest that higher pay equates to more productive, healthy and safe workplaces. But is this a correct assumption? What if the opposite is true? READ MORE

This is How Much Less Remote Employees are Willing to Accept in Salary

As much as companies are trying to get employees back into offices, those who had a taste of remote work during the pandemic are increasingly resistant to the idea. So much so that workers are willing to take a pay cut to work from home.

This is according to Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom; a leading voice in remote-work research. Bloom told USA Today that the average prospective employee is willing give up about 8 percent in annual salary for a job that is partly or fully remote; or about $4,600 per year based on a median U.S. salary of $57,200 for full-time workers. READ MORE

Is The Big Law Salary Bonus Worth The Hours?

Big law firms are known for their high salaries and generous bonuses, making them an attractive option for many law school graduates.

But bonus payments by big law firms are changing as they pay special bonuses, during COVID, and ‘extra’ payments, while boutique law firms are sometimes outpacing big law firms in their bonus payments. But some firms are also using bonuses as a ‘stick’ to get associates back to the office. READ MORE

Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines show salary ranges as top employees get millions

Leaked pay guidelines reveal that Microsoft employees can be awarded over $1million as a hiring bonus, $1million in stock, in addition to over $300,000 as a base salary.

The banding system sees new hires receiving different levels of pay ranges for base pay, hiring bonuses, and annual stock awards. According to Business Insider, the guidelines were published earlier this year and are used by hiring managers to decide how much to offer new hires, according to a person with direct knowledge of the process. READ MORE

UAW focuses on soaring CEO pay in strike for better wages at the Detroit Three

The United Auto Workers union’s strike against the Detroit Three for higher wages, more paid time off, and the elimination of tiered workers, which is in its fourth week, has drawn attention to the vast differences in pay between autoworkers and executives at auto manufacturers. 

The union has frequently spoken out about the gulf between CEO pay and worker pay to argue that the auto manufacturers can afford to increase wages for autoworkers.  READ MORE

Fatherhood premium, motherhood penalty? What Nobel Prize economics winner's research shows

Sapna Arvind had always dreamed of having a big career in finance.

“My dad, when I was a child, would say, ‘I wanna see you on CNBC,’ "she says. “So I did my undergrad in finance at New York University with those words ringing in my ears.”

Arvind embarked on a career in asset management in New York City after getting an MBA in finance from MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts. By her mid-30s, she was also a mother of two children under the age of 10. READ MORE

Consider Incenting Sales Reps for Customer Success, Service and Satisfaction

In today’s services economy, buyer experience is a key sales differentiator and a driver to future sales. That fact is all-important to customer success, but how can your organization best influence the key factors – consumer confidence and customer satisfaction -- that power it? One beneficial strategy is to consider making customer success metrics a component of the sales incentive compensation plan.  READ MORE

How DEI Will Shape Executive Compensation in Changing Legal Climate

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs are successful when they are incentivized, as seen by the significant leapOpen in a new tab in hiring people of color at S&P 100 companies in 2021. 

But following the Supreme Court's June ruling against affirmative actionOpen in a new tab, businesses are taking another look at their DEI programs and questioning if similar legal action may be taken against employers. One area being examined is tying DEI benchmarks to executive compensation.  READ MORE

Gender pay gap report earns Nobel Prize

Apart from being the kind of feat that catches the attention of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the win signals once more that pay equity is a hot topic.

At the top of the year, experts predicted pay would be a trending DEI hot topic for 2023. Since the beginning of the pandemic — and subsequent erasure of the boundaries between work and home — the gendered burden of child care on working women has been increasingly top of mind for the HR industry. READ MORE

Hottest Job of 2023 with 2Cr Salary — AI Prompt Engineering

Are AI tools like ChatGPT & GPT-4 threatening your job security? Don’t worry you’re not alone in this black hole because, in the coming years, a report by Goldman Sach predicted that 300 million jobs will be diminished because of Artificial Intelligence taking over human jobs. And this is actually something to worry about. But we’ve also found the solution to get an upper hand on AI by learning how to talk to ChatGPT before it starts controlling us. In this blog, we’ll dive into how to secure a 2cr salary by doing AI prompt engineering — the hottest job of 2023. READ MORE