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Camouflage compensation, also known as stealth compensation, refers to pay and/or benefits granted to upper-echelon employees and senior executives that are obscure in nature or may not be disclosed clearly in mandatory company filings.
This allows management to receive greater overall compensation on the sly without raising the concern of shareholders or other stakeholders. READ MORE
“The last couple of years of compensation have been probably the craziest that I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been working in comp for over 20 years now,” Josh Steinfeld, principal product strategist at Carta, a total compensation platform, told HR Brew.
Startup compensation, in particular, has been particularly susceptible to volatility in the wake of a 2021 hiring boom that saw HR departments scrambling to fill labor demand. This boom cycle came to a halt when the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates to slow lending, and venture capital funding slowed considerably. READ MORE
Investors are rattling more US companies over executive pay, attacking bonuses and other changes to remuneration while shying away from supporting highly politicised environmental and social measures. Dozens of US-listed companies that proposed to change their pay plans struggled to win support from shareholders this year, according to research from Glass Lewis, a proxy adviser. READ MORE
Morgan Stanley asked a federal judge to “reconsider” his November ruling granting its motion to compel former brokers to arbitrate their disputes about allegedly unpaid deferred compensation.
Although the U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe in Manhattan decided partially in Morgan Stanley’s favor, he also concluded that the wirehouse’s deferred compensation plan should be governed by federal pension law, specifically, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. READ MORE
Tesla is not offering its employees yearly merit-based stock awards, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.
Tesla did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.
The news comes after United Auto Workers union said in November it is launching a first-of-its-kind push to publicly organize the entire nonunion auto sector in the U.S., including Tesla, after winning new contracts with the Detroit Three automakers. READ MORE
In anticipation of the new year, a new report from ON Partners delves into major shifts impacting the business world, including average compensation rates by company size, geo-market hiring demand, and industry sectors experiencing the greatest shifts in talent management strategies. “This year’s report leverages transparency and data innovation, specifically as it relates to overall compensation for the executive marketplace,” said Tim Conti, co-president of ON Partners. “Through our research, we were able to confirm trends in CEO and C-suite compensation and a rise in executive recruitment in Middle America.” READ MORE
The SEC’s final Pay versus Performance (PVP) disclosure rules were issued on August 25, 2022. Given the number of implementation issues that were raised as companies struggled to comply with the new rules, the SEC staff issued several Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations (CDIs) to clarify the disclosure requirements: fifteen CDIs were issued on February 10th, nine CDIs were issued on September 27th, and ten CDIs (including revisions to two prior CDIs) were issued on November 21st.
This Viewpoint highlights some of the most important SEC guidance that companies should consider in preparing their 2024 PVP disclosure. READ MORE
Americans working beyond retirement age has almost doubled since the late 1980s and the wage gap between them and their younger colleagues is shrinking, according to a Pew Research Center reportOpen in a new tab.
Not only are older workers increasing in number, but their earning power has grown in recent decades, according to the Pew report. In 2022, the typical worker age 65 or older earned $22 per hour, up from $13 in 1987. Earnings for younger workers haven’t grown as much. As a result, the wage gap between older workers and those ages 25 to 64 has narrowed significantly. READ MORE
SAP will start considering share-based compensation as a regular expense in the new year, part of changes to the software company's financial reporting practices it said were aimed at increasing the transparency of its operating results.
The Walldorf, Germany-based group said Monday that it would include share-based compensation expenses in its non-IFRS results starting Jan. 1, meaning the move will initially affect SAP's first-quarter results to be reported on April 22. SAP's 2023 results won't reflect the change, but guidance for the new year--expected to come Jan. 24--will factor in the new accounting, which could also feed into potential updates of its 2025 targets. READ MORE
As salary transparency laws crop up across the country, workers, too, are welcoming the change.
All generations of employees in the workforce rank lack of salary transparency, along with unclear or unreasonable job responsibilities and poor communication with a hiring manager, among the top reasons they would withdraw their applications from open roles, a June report by talent solutions and business consulting firm Robert Half found. READ MORE
Employers will continue to tie their executive compensation programs to environmental, social and governance, or ESG, factors in 2024 despite growing opposition to corporate ESG initiatives, WTW consultants said during a virtual presentation Thursday.
“ESG is here to stay — that’s a pretty strong consensus across the governance community,” said Don Delves, WTW managing director and the company’s executive compensation and board advisory leader for North America. “However, most boards and companies are focusing more on what key elements of ESG and other non-financial metrics are most important, most relevant and hold the most strategic value for their company and their industry.” READ MORE
Last year’s top five list was dominated by inland states as hybrid and remote work opportunities expanded talent sourcing possibilities, but things are reverting back to favor coastal states as return-to-office efforts continue.
About 90% of companies plan to implement RTO policies by the end of 2024, according to an August report from Resume Builder. READ MORE
Uber is on a roll. Through the first three quarters of this year, Uber racked up over $2.8 billion in operating cash flow, while posting a 21% increase in global bookings. Investors have taken notice; Uber’s stock price has more than doubled year-to-date.
On his most recent earnings call, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi attributed Uber’s success to “the growth flywheel we built, coupled with rigorous cost discipline, enabling us to generate strong leverage to exit the year with tremendous momentum and reliable execution.” But cutting through corporate-speak, Dara (as he prefers to be called) failed to mention the biggest factor driving Uber’s growing profitability. Dara has gone back to an old trick in Uber’s playbook: cutting driver pay. But this time, with a clever change in how the company pays its US drivers, disguising yet another pay cut, and allowing Uber to take a much bigger cut of passenger fares for itself. READ MORE
Game maker Activision Blizzard has agreed to pay $47 million to settle gender discrimination claims brought by California in 2021.
Why it matters: The settlement is one of the largest in state history. It offers a potential legal resolution, at least, to scandals that have rocked the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft maker in recent years. READ MORE
Even as inflation slows at the end of 2023, planned salary increases for 2024 remain higher than averages over the past 20 years. Employers continue to cite inflationary pressures and concerns over a tight labor market as the primary influencing factors behind salary increase budgets. READ MORE
As we edge closer to the new year, the landscape of executive compensation is undergoing subtle yet notable shifts. These shifts look set to carry over into the new year and beyond.
Chief Executive Research's recently released CEO & Senior Executive Compensation Report provides a comprehensive view of the state of executive pay going into 2024. Let's delve into the key highlights and trends shaping the compensation landscape. READ MORE
Expanding OFCCP compliance is part of a wider shift to drive pay equity at the federal level.
Earlier this year on August 25, 2023, the OFCCP announced its updated Supply and Service Scheduling Letter and Itemized Listing. Changes to the scheduling letter are far-reaching. Significant amendments relate to the scope of required employee level compensation data, factors used to determine pay, and documentation that help explain factors and reasoning used to determine compensation. READ MORE
Recently, Salesforce became the latest high-profile company to link executive pay to DEI goals. As of February 2022, a portion of Salesforce’s executive variable pay for those at the executive VP and above level will be determined by four ESG measures—such as increasing the percentage of underrepresented employees in the U.S. and abroad.
Salesforce, with its 29,000 employees scattered around the world, added its name to the growing list of companies that link executive compensation to diversity targets. McDonald’s, Starbucks, Microsoft, and Alcoa are among the others that practice this type of pay-for-performance. READ MORE
With prices still running hot around the U.S., millions of workers are counting on a large enough annual pay bump to keep them a step ahead of inflation next year.
Employers plan to offer an average salary increase of 4% for 2024, according to a new survey from WTW, which advises companies on compensation issues. That figure is slightly lower than in 2023, when raises averaged 4.4%, but still tops the roughly 3% increase companies were offering in previous years, the consulting firm found. READ MORE
Striking the right compensation balance that allows a private company to measure up when competing with peers for leadership talent can be difficult. The data, after all, isn’t public, and most headlines focus on CEO compensation at the largest public companies in the country, hardly a reference point for those operating in the middle market. READ MORE