As a Result of Increased Shareholder Engagements, Have You Seen Boards Change the Definition of Performance Metrics?

According to Mark Rosen, managing director at Pearl Meyer & Partners, there’s been a rise in the use of relative shareholder return (TSR) as a metric for aligning executive pay and performance driven by standards used by shareholder advisory firms. While useful, it is more of an outcome-based measure. By defaulting to relative TSR as an incentive measure, many companies miss the opportunity to employ incentive metrics that capture executives’ success in driving business strategies and leadership initiatives—key aspects of performance that are critical to the creation of long-term shareholder value.

We have encouraged companies to customize incentive designs to their specific business needs by retaining internal performance metrics (or introducing them if they were not used before), such as operating earnings, EBIDTA or return measures (ROIC/ROE), and using TSR as an additional performance measure or modifier. In such cases, actual incentive payouts under the plan might ultimately be adjusted upward or downward, respectively, based on whether relative TSR is above median, suggesting the targets were set too high, or below median, suggesting the targets were not sufficiently rigorous. Such an approach provides a broader and more sensitive perspective on aligning executive pay with performance.