“The [healthcare] leadership labor market is extremely tight and paying retention bonuses and making discretionary incentive awards is the cost of doing business,” said Steve Sullivan, managing director, Pearl Meyer.

“There are so many things that are uncertain right now that I don’t know that a lot of health systems yet know how to work their way through it, other than getting through each day and doing the best they can,” said Bill Dixon, managing director at Pearl Meyer.

Incentive plans can evolve past traditional financial, quality, and experience metrics and health systems might formulate incentives around progress made toward their larger strategic vision noted Bill Dixon, managing director, Pearl Meyer.

“Liquidity and stability are a value proposition now, and paying top-dollar cash comp,” said Aalap Shah, managing director at Pearl Meyer. They [firms in the financial sector going after tech workers] should be going out there and recruiting like crazy.” 

"The pendulum has certainly swung back the other way [for tech workers]”, said Aalap Shah, managing director at Pearl Meyer. "Now there are austerity measures all around, and companies are looking to focus in on talent of the highest caliber."