A follow-up on Zynga

So Zynga, the company behind hugely successful Farmville and other games on Facebook, eventually proceeded to its IPO last week. Despite raising 1 billion dollars (the largest tech IPO since Google), the stock value fizzled very rapidly, even on the first day : it was priced at 10 $ and closed at 9.45 $. This…

Pay transparency for all employees in some US government entities

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey publishes the salaries of its 6,777 employees on its website. The decision came after some criticism about how public money is spent and some controversy about payroll in this organisation. When I read this article, I have to admit being impressed by the level of transparency…

High Pay Commission report tackles excessive high compensation

Since the beginning of the global crisis, the topic of Executive Pay has been a major point of focus for many observers, journalists, economists, governance and  remuneration specialists, as well as the “man on the street”. Recent developments in the US have included the implementation of stricter rules regarding Say on Pay (shareholders voting on…

Socialize your Compensation & Benefits annual business plan

So the time has come to socialise your brilliant Compensation & Benefits annual business plan. You spent hours gathering and  integrating feedback from your internal clients, thinking about the company strategy and how your team can help accelerate the organisation’s vision and objectives, and putting together a detailed program inclusive of organisation chart, resources needed…

A methodology to define which roles qualify as “Executive”

In today’s Reader Question, a while ago, one of my former colleagues reached out as he was about to embark on a new project : “I’ve moved on to a technology company from manufacturing and enjoying the challenge. Just curious if you have an example of criteria for defining Director or VP roles within any…

Share the knowledge – November 2011

Once again I want to share with you some of the best articles, news and blog posts that I read during the month. I’m covering general Compensation & Benefits, compensation articles that are more closely linked to the Middle East region, and some general articles that relate to management, leadership, governance or social media.  …

4 skills to master for influential Compensation and Benefits

One of my first posts was about the fact that we need to move from compensation data to compensation intelligence. This is really one of my areas of interest as I believe it is one of the main ways that we can get real attention from the business – by talking the same language as…