By Aviva Sapers
During the Great Resignation, it has become even more important to find ways to attract, retain, and reward key employees. These days, competitive salaries may not be enough to hold your team in place. Benefits, stock options, Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans (SERPs), and other non-qualified executive benefits plans can help incentivize performance, promote teamwork, and foster alignment between a business and its people. If you don’t have these plans or they don’t seem to be working for you, it may be time for your company to review the executive benefits being offered and assess whether they are performing as intended.
For many companies, particularly in high-tech and the life sciences sectors, one of the most utilized executive benefits has revolved around stock options, stock appreciation rights, etc. The goal being that if/when the company succeeds by either going public or having a significant stock price increase, those with large shareholdings stand to benefit significantly amid escalating stock value.
However, when the market is volatile or trending downward as it has done recently, employee performance rewards of stock related programs may not provide incentives the way they were expected. As with most things, diversification is key and offering a more varied suite of incentive plans could help mitigate the negative effects of one underperforming benefit option.
Today’s Executive Benefit plans can be tailored to fit the customized needs of a specific individual. If supplemental retirement options better suit the needs of an executive, then a Supplemental Executive Retirement Plan (SERP) or a Deferred Comp and Supplemental Alternative Retirement Plan (SARP) might be a good alternative to sock options. If your executives are from a younger demographic, plans focused on putting children thru college may be a primary goal, making a KEEP (Key Employee Education Plan) a good benefit option. Alternately, if your company is looking to offer benefits that others don’t, then an executive long-term care program might be the differentiating option to add to your offerings.
Regardless of your particular needs and situation, creative executive benefits programs continue to evolve to meet the demands of a changing workforce. If you have any interest in learning more about the full spectrum of executive benefits options, please reach out to us at Sapers & Wallack, Inc.