Rethinking Long-term Incentives: Adapting to Evolving Standards

Long-term incentive (LTI) plans remain a cornerstone of executive compensation. Historically, proxy advisor firms ISS and Glass Lewis have set a clear expectation that at least 50% of executive LTI awards be tied to performance-based metrics. However, signals from the 2025 proxy advisor policy surveys suggest a softening of this standard in the years ahead. For total rewards professionals shaping compensation strategy, this shift offers a challenge and an opportunity: navigating an increasingly complex set of best practices and creating opportunities for companies to refine their LTI strategy in support of their own strategic business objectives.

The on-demand webinar explores:

• What’s Changing and Why It Matters: Offers clarity on how Glass Lewis and ISS’s evolving standards on performance-based LTI usage interacts with broader expectations on pay quantum, LTI mix, vesting terms, and other elements of executive pay strategy and governance.
• ISS’s Enhanced Qualitative Lens: Explores how ISS’s evolving approach—while not codified as formal policy—reflects a growing emphasis on the strategic rationale, performance alignment, and overall effectiveness of LTI design choices and understand what this means for how performance-based awards will be assessed going forward.
• Balancing Design, Disclosure, and Shareholder Expectations: Reviews the interaction between LTI design decisions and other governance features. Review LTI design practices at S&P 500 companies and discuss LTI designs at specific companies that may be acceptable under the evolving standards.