Alberta Executive Compensation Report 2003
Whether it be a reaction to public outrage over excessive executive pay or an outcome of the wide array of challenges the Canadian economy has been facing, cautiousness seems to be a major undertone of this year’s Executive Compensation Report
Huge salary increases and trendy, extravagant perks are simply not the order of the day. But with Alberta’s unemployment rate sitting at 4.9%, attracting and keeping talented top-level employees is a greater challenge than ever.
We surveyed 477 human resource managers across the province to find out not only what companies pay their Alberta-based executive staff but also what compensation policies they have in place to motivate, retain and attract their employees. The survey looks at a wide range of policies, from vacation entitlement and salary review to annual bonuses and stock option plans.
This year we also surveyed executive search companies to get their perspective on trends in executive recruiting. Want to find out the average cost for an executive search? Interested in what they think are the biggest growth industries?
The results of this survey are not always what you might expect. While the median CEO salary is still a respectable $200,000, followed by COO at $120,000 and CFO at $107,500, today’s executive officers are also the least likely to obtain salary increases. A surprising 24% of companies indicated their executive officers did not obtain salary increases over the past year. Further, only 21% were planning to give out salary increases for the next fiscal year at an average of 3.87%. The highest projected salary increase for an executive officer was 10%.
Perhaps executives are simply being paid more in line with company performance, a theme explored in the article starting on page 38. According to our survey, it’s certainly an important factor in determining an employee’s eligibility for promotion, trailing only personal performance and project performance.
Alberta CEOs in particular are also being offered some very lucrative compensation packages, with incentives such as annual bonuses and stock options clocking in as high as $1,743,333 and $837,500, respectively.
If you’re simply interested in which companies are paying the biggest salaries, it seems the rule is the bigger the better. Not surprisingly, public companies with the most employees and the highest annual revenues easily came out ahead in the majority of cases.
More detailed information is included in the charts and analysis on the following pages. If you have any suggestions for next year’s survey, please send them via e-mail to feedback.
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