“In the last five to ten years, at almost all of my client companies, we’re constantly talking about pay for performance,” said Tim Dupuis, principal.

“What they want to do is make sure [cybersecurity] is becoming ingrained culturally, and the path to do that is by linking it to [executive] compensation,” said Aalap Shah, managing director.

According to a Pearl Meyer survey, 30 percent of US employers offered job titles as a reward last year. Big businesses particularly seem to like dry promotions: 40 percent of companies with annual revenue between $300 million and $1 billion played the dry promotion game.

“In a competitive labor market, it is critical to obtain reliable and current market data when putting together a compensation and total rewards package for any leadership position—and that is most definitely the case for a Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAIO),” said Rebecca Toman, vice president of the survey business unit.