Managing Executive Remuneration

Managing the level and structure of executive remuneration is a key responsibility of the Board and particularly its independent directors.  Increased focus since the GFC has led to more stringent disclosure requirements along with greater consequences for Boards that are not in tune with their shareholders.  In short, Boards are more accountable than ever for the effective management of executive remuneration.  At Mastertek our consultants are experts in the field with a track record of assisting clients with the key challenges including;

• Clearly demonstrating how remuneration drives performance & aligns with tangible business outcomes.
• Continuing to engage, motivate & reward executives with the appropriate capabilities to deliver shareholder value.
• Ensuring absolute compliance with legislated disclosure requirements, processes and regulator mandates

Beyond the ASX guidance, at Mastertek we believe the principles of Strategic Alignment can support the broader principles very effectively when executed well.  Philosophically, reward and remuneration programs should not be set up in isolation but designed to support the behaviours and contributions that will lead to organisational success – creating our link back to performance.  In summary, the concept of strategic alignment when applied to executive remuneration design suggests:

• The reward strategy and its various components should be considered as a continuum from individually focused elements through to group-based reward levers.
• Similarly, the continuum accepts that some aspects (e.g. fixed pay) are essentially costs of doing business – the cost of getting people to come and work for us
• We also recognise though that many aspects of reward should be flexible according to results – again, ensuring the relationship with performance

Beyond the more generic design principles, there a numerous ‘situation specific’ considerations that will help to shape best-fit – rather than best practice – reward solutions for your Executives.

Our model shows the range of inputs and considerations we might need to work through in order to determine what is appropriate.  We’ve mentioned Strategic Alignment already and the idea of understanding the required capabilities and availability of those skills in the market.

We also need to be conscious of stakeholder perspectives – shareholders (we’ll come back to), employees themselves (of course) but also customers.  A great question to ask yourselves when designing rem plans is ‘what would our customers say if we told them how we intend to reward our people’.

In order to ensure alignment with business strategies and objectives, we obviously need to ensure we have a clear understanding of what success looks like.  This understanding begins to lay the foundations for our reward programs and is where we ask ourselves:

• How do the current capabilities stack  up
• How big is the talent pool we can draw from, what is the availability of key talent

Answering these questions starts to inform the potential market positioning we will need to target in order to attract and retain the people we need to create success.  We’ll also start to form opinions around what kind of leverage we will need to create in order to drive performance.  From here then we can start to think about our reward plan designs.

Advisory groups and institutional shareholders all have their own principles and voting checklists that they promote to their clients as a guide to what remuneration should look like – particularly in the case of Long Term Incentive plan design.

Our advice to clients is that you should wherever possible engage early and directly and develop strong relationships.  The ASX guidance supports this approach.

For example, they suggest that whilst you are not generally required to obtain shareholder approval for equity-based incentive plans for senior executives who are not directors it may be useful to test proposed equity-based incentive plans with shareholders in a bid to provide the board with a timely assurance that a plan is seen as reasonable.  Check out our High-Gain Questions for Shareholders for some tips on how best to start a conversation about executive remuneration practices.

It’s worth reminding ourselves that remuneration is essentially a person-based decision.  Whilst benchmarking can provide an external view (read more about benchmarking and reporting here) candidate-specific considerations should fundamentally be based on the skills, experience and contribution that the individual brings to the organisation.  When coupled with the organisational context we can really begin to refine the approaches that we need to employ.

For example – how critical is the individual’s skill set to our future success?  This might inform how hard we need to work to ensure they don’t leave – which in turn starts to suggest longer-term, retention based levers need to be pulled.  Alternatively, we may have a critical downsizing program to drive through and should then be focussing on shorter-term incentives aligned to the key milestones that need to be achieved.

• Flight risk and impact should be considered
• The effectiveness of succession planning frameworks might assist
• Consider the future potential to deliver strategic objectives as well as past performance
• Ensure that behaviour and style are factored in

Essentially, the aim is to map the needs of the organisation to the capabilities and potential of the individual.  This leads us to thinking about an appropriate pay mix.

When thinking about the appropriate make-up of executive remuneration packages, the pay mix and plan design should be tuned to the nature of the role in question as well as the organisational context more broadly.

For example, the ASX principles suggest that Directors should be remunerated quite differently from Executives.  Why?  Because they are tasked with a different set of responsibilities.  Or as another example – consider Doctors versus Sales Executives – quite different approaches to reward you’d hope!  In Finance, as another example, regulators are having more and more of a say and this is shaping trends in reward design.

We believe that the mandatory Remuneration Report be treated as an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by effectively communicating your organisation’s reward strategy.  Our advice is again consistent with the ASX guidance as compliance with listing rules requires an explanation of the extent to which you have followed the Corporate Governance Council’s Recommendations (or provided reasons for adopting alternative practices).

One of our favourite tests is to ask yourself ‘Will the RemCo chair be able to answer any difficult questions at the AGM?’.  Our job in designing the reward programs is to make sure they will have all the answers, and that those answers are credible.  This requires a clear philosophy, articulated through guiding principles.  We then need to design our plans in accordance with these principles and with the situation-specific questions answered.  Only then can we communicate openly and effectively.

You can read more about the key considerations when planning and preparing your Remuneration Report here or use the button on the right to download our Guide to Effective Remuneration Reporting.

It’s imperative that you use comprehensive benchmarking to inform your future executive remuneration design decisions.  When drafting your Remuneration Report you can then also provide detail as to the nature and rationale of any market data used for comparison purposes to give shareholders confidence in the selected amounts of fixed remuneration for example.

Don’t rely simply on the dollar for dollar comparisons with other executives, make use of comprehensive benchmarking which factors in company performance, industry specifics, company size and other important factors as with our Performance Pay Index.  That way you’ll be providing stakeholders with sufficient information to understand the benchmarking process and its robustness.