Free FLSA Advisor

The U.S. Department of Labor has a free on-line tool to help you determine if an employee is covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act.

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Flexibility vs. Salary Cut

A survey released August 30 by Mom Corps, a national flexible staffing firm, found 45 percent of working adults are willing to give up some percentage of their salary for more flexibility at work.

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2012 Director Compensation Study

Steven Hall & Partners recently completed the seventh annual study of compensation paid to non-employee directors at the 200 largest companies in the United States.  Some of the findings were:

• Total compensation paid to non-employee directors rose +4% over 2010 levels.  This increase exceeds the average merit increases of 3% for executives over the same period.
• Equity compensation is delivered predominantly in full value shares.
• Equity vesting periods continue to be short, with the majority of awards vesting either immediately or within one year of the grant date.
• Meeting fees continue to decline in prevalence for both board and committee service, to 31% and 34% respectively.
• Pay mix for non-employee directors has remained relatively unchanged since 2006. Directors continue to receive just over half of their total compensation in the form of equity (53% in 2011).
• Share ownership guidelines continue to rise in prevalence, with 89% of companies disclosing the existence of such guidelines in 2011.

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Communicating Compensation

According to a study conducted by the human resources consulting firm, Watson Wyatt Worldwide, organizations that communicated most effectively with employees experienced a return to shareholders of 26%.  Those organizations that communicated least effectively produced a -15% return.

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5 Real-World Sales Comp Metrics

Consultant Joseph DiMisa offers five real-world metrics that will help you spot sales compensation problems early.  DiMisa suggests compensation pros look at the following metrics:

1. PAR Analysis: Analysis of churn, penetration and acquisition
2. Pay Differentiation: Ratio of incentive pay to the median
3. Average Pay Composition: Pay composition by component
4. Performance Distributions: Histogram of sales rep performance by a given metric
5. Compensation Cost of Sales: Total compensation (Base Pay + Commissions) for full year reps/corresponding annualized revenue

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