“The current macroeconomic climate has proven that we are in an employees’ market and a Pearl Meyer survey of corporate leadership earlier this year indicated that up to one-third of companies are feeling the pressure to pay more at the mid-year mark,” reported CFO Dive. 

“Companies are looking to ensure that compensation is delivered within variables that management can influence and drive,” said Brett Herand, principal, Pearl Meyer.

“There is more to shareholder concern about executive pay than just economics” said Deb Lifshey, managing director of Pearl Meyer. “Evolving ESG priorities might also drive scrutiny from a range of stakeholders.” 

“This is a big rule of thumb, but generally, you might see a 15% pay difference between the CEO and president,” said Jan Koors, managing director at Pearl Meyer.

“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."

“The stock market is hammering tech companies,” said Wes Hart, a managing director with Pearl Meyer, an executive compensation consultancy. “When we look back at end of the year, oil and gas bonuses are going to be good. The others? Not so much.”

“Executive succession and retention are an important issue,” said Wes Hart, managing director with Pearl Meyer. “With all of the oil and gas cycles in the past few years, the lack of executive talent is an issue. When oil and gas were doing badly, it was hard to keep people.”

"It’s surprising because historically it has been pretty rare to see mid-year salary increases," said Rebecca Toman, vice president of the survey business unit at Pearl Meyer.