"According to a recent survey from Pearl Meyer and Women Corporate Directors, 35% of boards discuss succession planning for the CEO and his or her direct reports, 20% discuss succession regarding the direct reports to the CEO’s direct reports, and 5% discuss succession planning three or more levels below the CEO."

"There is more of a move these days for directors to give each other feedback during—or in addition to—an annual board assessment, and that can help mitigate the risk that you end up with ‘zombie’ directors in the first place," said Peter Thies, managing director.

“IPO grants [to CEOs] serve two purposes—alignment with shareholders and retention, because an executive disruption at that stage can be very problematic,” noted Aalap Shah

“It will be difficult for many [tech] companies to not reduce the number of shares that the executives are getting," said Aalap Shah, managing director, Pearl Meyer.

As companies move forward with AI adoption, many leaders have acknowledged that AI is already changing their organizational structure, according to a Pearl Meyer report. Leaders also said they’re developing a change management strategy and implementing communication plans to keep employees informed.

“A lot of this is very subjective,” said Deborah Lifshey, a managing director at executive compensation consultant Pearl Meyer. “Do you leave it open to morals? Or get specific into MeToo and harassment?”

“The vast majority of my clients in the tech industry are planning to cut their executives’ pay this year by giving them smaller equity packages,” said Aalap Shah, managing director, Pearl Meyer.

"Even though tech companies have made an effort to control costs in the second half of this year, many have also increased their employees' compensation in some form over the last six months, most often through equity grants," said Aalap Shah, managing director at Pearl Meyer.

“Passing [say-on-pay] by 60 percent or passing by 70 percent is almost like failing,” said Jan Koors, senior managing director, Pearl Meyer.  

“The world is a lot different than it was last proxy season. As a result, diversity, equity, and inclusion are taking up a lot more bandwidth in boardrooms,” said Jannice Koors, senior managing director and Western region president at Pearl Meyer.

“For the raft of new pay transparency laws to have a sustained impact, companies will need to inject other measures of transparency … that means being open about employees’ room for growth within the company, as well as their potential career path,” said Beth Florin, CEO at Pearl Meyer.

“For employees that have some tenure with a company, a down round or depreciated value can result in a perverse incentive to go ‘next door’ and get a new package that is valued at a much lower stock price but [has a] higher wealth creation opportunity,” said Aalap Shah, managing director.