Looking Ahead to Executive Pay Practices in 2024

Pearl Meyer’s “Looking Ahead to Executive Pay Practices” is an annual, online survey and valuable compensation planning tool. This year’s survey was conducted in August and September of 2023, with total participation of 304 companies, including 148 publicly traded, 110 private-for-profit, and 46 not-for-profit (NFP) organizations. As with prior surveys, responses are broken out separately by respondent role (board member vs. employee), ownership type, industry, and company revenue size.

This year’s survey addresses key topics associated with the current environment, including the expanding role for compensation committees with broader human capital oversight, actions taken to address incentive plan goal-setting challenges, and the potential impact of recent regulatory developments on executive pay practices at publicly traded companies. As with prior surveys, it also covers subjects such as compensation philosophy, expected pay outcomes for Fiscal 2023, projected salary increase levels for 2024, recent or anticipated incentive plan design changes and use of discretion for cycles ending in 2023, and long-term incentive award prevalence and participation.