Got a top-notch CEO or president and want to make sure she or he doesn't look for greener (as in money) pastures elsewhere? Then you may want to consider the findings of the 2014 AESC BlueSteps Executive Compensation Report.
This study of compensation at nearly 1,000 large corporations chunks out considerable data that will offer comparisons between what your bosses are making and the comp that others enjoy. In general the report indicates that corporations need to shell out some big bucks to their top decision makers. But if your CEO didn't get a big raise, or even one at all, don't worry too much — many others had the same experience.
For starters, if your CEO didn't get a raise in the last fiscal year, your company was in the majority. Respondents said 43 percent of CEOs didn't get a raise last year. The report found that less than half — 44 percent — got increases. Meantime, 14 percent had their comp cut — and more CEOs suffered that fate than did other C-level, EVP and director/executive level bosses.
Recommended For You
Among those three lower boss levels, two-thirds of them got raises. And only about a quarter of the other three classifications reported neither an increase nor a decrease. One in 10 said they took a cut.
It wasn't necessary to dangle a huge total compensation increase before your CEO in order to stay safely in the middle of the pack last year. Almost two-thirds of them had to settle for raises of between 1 percent and 10 percent. Just 17 percent got increases of 16 percent or more.
But the two management tiers just below CEO — "other C-level" and EVP — did better than CEOs at the high end of the compensation increase chart. Twenty-eight percent of "other C-level" said they got raises of 16 percent or more, and 23 percent of the EVP level respondents reported getting 16 percent-plus.
So the CEOs didn't necessarily fare better last year than other managers, the report found. That, says BlueSteps, is because performance-based pay systems are taking hold and working, especially at the top level of management. The study suggests that, by staying just below the CEO/president level, one may experience a more gratifying compensation trend.
However, the lower level bosses make quite a bit less in total comp than their superiors.
"A significant amount (45.6 percent) of CEOs made base salaries of $251-400K, while the rest of the C-suite (64.7 percent) earned $151-300K–$100K less than the CEOs," the report said.
Other findings from the report:
- The gender pay gap begins to develop at the $250K base salary level and above, due to fewer women being represented in C-suite positions.
- Long-term incentives were an important motivating factor to most executives, with 60.5 percent stating that they believe long-term incentives have motivated them to stay at their current company longer, until these incentives mature.
- CEOs (58.4 percent) mainly received other cash compensation at the $0-25K range, but a significant amount (20.8 percent) earned much more other cash compensation, at the $101K+ level.
- Only 3.1 percent of director-level executives, 10.4 percent of EVP/SVP/VP executives and 11.1 percent of other C-level executives earned $101K+ in other cash compensation.
- The largest percentage (51.3 percent) of annual cash bonuses for female executives was less than $50K in the last fiscal year. The lion's share (38.9 percent) of global male executives also received less than $50K in cash bonuses. While each range varied, males aggregated the majority of the bonuses above $51K (48.5 percent vs. 38.2 percent).
- In the last fiscal year, there was about a $21K difference between the average male and female bonus.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
