Incentive Plan Design for a Volatile Economy

This episode of The Executive Compensation Podcast features Virginia Rhodes, Partner, and Jeff Keckley, Lead Consultant, of Meridian Compensation Partners. Virginia has more than 20 years of experience consulting in all areas of compensation including program design, benchmarking, and governance in best practices. Jeff also consults on a variety of issues including peer group selection, benchmarking, and severance arrangements.

Many organizations continued to struggle during 2021. Compensation committees face tough decisions in determining executive payouts while taking into account supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, raw material price increases, and other uncontrollable factors. In the podcast, Virginia and Jeff break down various ways companies are adapting annual and long-term incentive programs to cope with these pressures.

They talk about why it is easier to make adjustments to annual plans, especially considering that investors and proxy advisors generally have a negative view toward adjusting performance-based long-term incentives after the fact. You’ll also learn how companies are designing more flexible plans by adjusting annual performance periods, widening target performance ranges, and building discretion into the plan from the beginning.

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