Say on Pay - ERI Economic Research Institute

Say on Pay - ERI Economic Research Institute...

 

On October 18th, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rules
that would allow shareholders to cast advisory votes on executive compensation in public companies subject to the federal proxy rules. If the proposed rules are enacted, regulated companies will be required to provide shareholders with an advisory vote on executive compensation and compensation arrangements related to merger transactions (golden parachutes). Institutional investors would be required to report their votes on executive compensation and golden parachute arrangements
at least annually. 

The proposed rules implement the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires that the advisory votes must take place at least once every three years beginning with the first annual shareholders’ meeting held after January 21, 2011. The companies would also be required to let shareholders cast a non-binding vote on whether the advisory votes would take place annually, every other year or every three years. The proposed rules also require additional disclosure of golden parachute arrangements with executive officers in connection with merger transactions, going-private transactions and third-party tender offers. Companies would be required to provide an advisory vote to approve some of these golden parachute arrangements. 

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SalaryExpert.com - Salary and Cost of Living Syndication Center

SalaryExpert.com - Salary and Cost of Living Syndication Center...

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Nonprofits Control Increases in Health Care Premiums with Cost Shifting to Employees

While nonprofits overall held organization-paid health care premium increases to single digits at the beginning of 2010, their employees were paying more for their coverage, with higher premium requirements, higher annual deductibles, higher co-payments, and even less extensive coverage. 

A new report by Abbott, Langer Association Surveys, Inc., entitled 2010 Benefits in Nonprofit Organizations, Tenth Edition, provides current data on health plan costs and benefit practices in nonprofit organizations that can be used to help evaluate benefit program design strategies. Released July 1, 2010, it covers specific types of benefits offered January 1, 2010, by a sample of 116 nonprofit organizations of varied sizes with a total of over 21,000 employees. Over half of the responding organizations had fewer than 50 employees; 17 percent had 50 to 99, and 22 percent had 100 to 499; the remaining 8 percent employed 500 or more. One hundred eighty-one medical plans covering over 15,000 nonprofit employees across the United States were reviewed, along with 115 dental plans.

Details on medical, vision, dental, disability, and life insurance, along with retirement plans, are presented, as well as information on paid leave and executive perquisites.

The 2010 findings include:

• 57% of respondents offering medical benefits have a Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plan as the primary medical plan.
  
  • The average employee cost for employee-only coverage is $76 per month.
  • The average employer cost for employee-only coverage is $418 per month – 85% of the total premium cost.
  • Average cost of the premium went up 14% for employees and dropped by 2% for employers from 2009 to 2010.
• Employers paid an average of 64% of the PPO premium for family coverage in 2010 – they paid 69% of the cost in 2009.
• 57% of respondents offered provisions to opt out of medical coverage and 35% provided some reimbursement for doing so;
• While 96% offer a retirement plan, only 14% are defined benefit plans; the most common type is a 403(b) plan.
• While 76% offer traditional leave plans typically consisting of sick days, vacation, bereavement leave, personal leave, and floating holidays, the remaining 24% combine all or part of paid leave into a pool (Paid Time Off or PTO plans), granting an average of nearly 23 days of paid leave after one year of employment; the average granted at 10 years of service is 30.6days.
• 87% offer dental plans, with Dental PPOs as the most common type of plan.
• Basic life insurance is provided by 88% of respondents and 75% offer a long-term disability plan. 

Copies of the report are available for $489 at www.abbott-langer.com. 

A companion Abbott, Langer Association Surveys, Inc., report, the 2010 Health Care Benefits Benchmarking Survey, compares health care plans, medical insurance, dental insurance, and vision insurance offered by nonprofit organizations, government entities, privately owned for-profit, and publicly owned for-profit organizations. Published in April 2010, it is also available for purchase at www.abbott-langer.com. 

About Abbott, Langer Association Surveys:

Since 1967, Abbott, Langer has provided a wide variety of compensation and benefit survey reports, with a particular focus on the nonprofit and manufacturing sectors. Now operating under license with ERI Economic Research Institute (www.erieri.com), Abbott, Langer uses ERI's patented online survey capabilities to produce reports used by thousands of customers for salary and benefit planning and other HR management decision-making. Users are diverse organizations that vary in size from extremely small to over $4 billion in annual sales volume, and include firms that operate locally, regionally, nationally, and even internationally. Please call 877-210-6563 or visit www.abbott-langer.com for more information and a complete list of available surveys.

Executive Pay at Lowest Levels since 2005, According to ERI Economic Research Institute

As Seen on PRLog.org...

A new study by the Economic Research Institute shows that the average total compensation of the highest-paid executives in U.S. publicly help companies dropped by 11.8 percent from February 2009 to February 2010 — the lowest point since the end of 2005.

ERI said the drop in its Total Compensation Index was driven by a 25.8 percent decrease in cash bonus and non-equity incentives — typically based on meeting performance goals — and a 12.8 percent drop in restricted stock awards.

Among ERI’s findings:

• Executive salaries dropped 2.9 percent, from $1.25 million in February 2009 to $1.22 million in 2010.
  
  
• Bonus and non-equity incentives fell 25.8 percent, from $4.28 million in 2009 to $3.18 million in 2010.
  
  
• Restricted stock awards fell 12.8 percent, from $5.02 million in February 2009 to $4.37 million in February 2010.
  
  
• Stock options fell 1.2 percent, from $4.38 million in 2009 to $4.33 million in 2010.
  
  
• All other compensation fell 35 percent, from $1.15 million in 2009 to $753,142 in 2010.

Redmond, Wash.-based Economic Research Institute provides salary survey and cost-of-living research reports and software to more than15,000 organizations worldwide.

Learn More: http://www.erieri.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Home.demo

ERI Economic Research Institute was founded in 1987 to provide compensation, benefits, and Human Resource research for private and public organizations in the form of published reports and software database products.

Number of Jobs in U.S. Projected to Grow, but Where Is Yours? - ERI Economic Research Institute

Number of Jobs in U.S. Projected to Grow, but Where Is Yours?

Redmond, WA – The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported last week that total employment is projected to increase by 10 percent from 2008 to 2018. Even though the Baby Boomers are working longer and delaying retirement, they can’t hold off forever – jobs created when current incumbents need to be replaced are projected to be more than double the number of openings due to economic growth in this 10-year period.

Jobs continue to shift from the goods-producing sector of the economy to services, the source of 96 percent of the increase in total employment. The two industries expected to have the largest employment growth are professional and business services (4.2 million) and health care and social assistance (4.0 million).

While construction employment is projected to increase slightly, manufacturing and mining jobs will drop. At the end of the ten years, the goods-producing sector is expected to account for only about 13 percent of jobs.

However, if you are one of the well over 15 million Americans out of work or one of the additional 9 million involuntarily working part time, you may be looking for some guidance on where to find employment right now.

The top ten occupational groups with the largest number of job openings include cashiers, retail salespersons, restaurant wait staff, customer service representatives, registered nurses, food preparation workers, general office clerks, laborers, elementary school teachers, and stock clerks. View BLS’ entire list of 30 at: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.t07.htm.

But the key to finding employment is matching your skills to a specific job in your geographic area. ERI Economic Research Institute is offering some free help, giving job-seekers access to a software program often used by Human Resources professionals to match job applicant abilities and interests to the requirements for actual jobs. You can create a list of organizations that employ people in the jobs you select, along with links to online job postings, all within your commuting range.

ERI’s founding director Dr. David Thomsen says, “Job search is all about minimizing rejection. ERI's software identifies jobs that fit and local employers posting openings for these jobs, while providing contact names, emails, addresses, and phone numbers. Because we want to increase the odds of a successful job search in these tough times, ERI is making this program available at no cost.”

Download the free Job Search version of ERI’s Occupational Assessor at:
http://www.erieri.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=LG.SingleDemo&ID=eDOT&source=salarySurveys to assist you in these tasks:

• Identify your education, achievements, skills, address, and any physical and/or mental limitations;
• Review the jobs found nationally or locally for which you qualify;
• Generate a list of employers within commuting radius that are most likely to have the positions that match your qualifications; and
• Review a list of job board postings by matched employer, area, and/or industry to see if any of these employers have a job available now.

Enhanced versions of the software for consultants and vocational experts are also available for purchase at: http://www.erieri.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=EDOT.Main.

About ERI Economic Research Institute:
ERI Economic Research Institute, Inc. is a leader in compensation and job content information. With data gathered from online surveys and an extensive survey library, ERI’s staff of 60 researchers provides subscribers with assessments of salaries, relocation cost, cost-of-living comparisons, and executive compensation. ERI’s compensation databases contain 20 years of collected data, covering the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries throughout Europe. ERI subscribers include the American Red Cross, Alaska Airlines, Monster Worldwide, Aon Consulting, Honda, Amtrak, Adidas America, Inc., IRS, CIA, and United Nations. ERI’s products include the Salary Assessor®, Geographic Assessor®, Relocation Assessor®, Executive Compensation Assessor®, Nonprofit Comparables Assessor™, and Occupational Assessor™ (eDOT®) software. For more information about ERI and its products, visit http://www.erieri.com.

Five Myths about Charitable Giving to Know before You Give! - ERI Economic Research Institute

Five Myths about Charitable Giving to Know before You Give from ERI Economic Research Institute...

#1 – Most charitable donations go to help the poor.

In 2008, total charitable giving in the US was estimated at about $308 billion, actually down almost 6% from 2007, according to Giving USA. Of this total, only 9% went to Human Services charities. These are the charities that have been the first to report increasing needs for services and a slower growth in contributions in hard economic times.

The biggest proportion of 2008 contributions – 35% -- went to religious organizations. The second highest sector to receive contributions was education, at 13% of the total.

So the organizations that you most likely think of as charities are really getting only a small portion of charitable donations.

#2 – Most charities get grants from foundations.

Individuals contributed 75% of the US total giving in 2008. Most charities receive none or only a small proportion of their revenues from foundation and corporations. Looking at the national total of charitable giving, foundations gave 13% and corporations only 5%. Donations from individuals are the major source of revenue for most charities.

#3 – When tax time comes, I can deduct my donations.

Maybe. First, the contribution must be to an organization that has been given tax exempt status under Internal Revenue Code 501 (C )(3). Before taking that deduction, the IRS wants you to verify that status. ERI Economic Research Institute makes the basic information on IRS status and also copies of the Form 990, the information form filed annually by larger nonprofits, available at www.eri-nonprofit-salaries.com.

Additionally, you have to itemize your deductions, rather than take the standard deduction on your return. Only about 30% of US taxpayers decide to itemize their deductions. There are different rules if you are donating something other than cash as well as limits on how much of your income you can donate and take a deduction. Plus you may be required to keep records. Check out everything you need to know in IRS Publication 526, Charitable Contributions, available at www.irs.gov.

#4 – I should only give to charities that say all my money will be used for programs and services.

Think about it -- how will the charity locate the people it is trying to serve? Does the organization have an office, staff, managers, computers, telephones, etc.? Every organization has overhead and requires some general support to be able to operate. When a charity guarantees that all money will go to the needy recipients, the next question should be who is paying for necessary overhead? Obviously, you may not want to support huge executive salaries and plush offices, but some expenditures are clearly needed. Again, check out what the organization reported in various expense categories and for its programs and services on its Form 990, available at www.eri-nonprofit-salaries.com.

#5 – There are so many good causes that I should give donations to as many as possible, even though the amounts will be small.

There are over a million charities in the US and the number grows every year. It is also hard to distinguish which ones are the best, based on their names, professionally-designed mailers, attention-grabbing pictures, and aggressive phone solicitors. Before you give your credit card number to a telemarketer or put a check in the mail in response to a letter, check the Form 990 for the most accurate portrait of the organization.

Making a small donation means that the organization will be spending a large proportion of it processing the gift. A more effective use of your money is to carefully select five to ten charities and make larger contributions. Then you will be able to have a bigger impact on the organization and also keep track of its progress and accomplishments. This approach should also cut down on the additional solicitations you will receive during the year!

Then Choose the Right Charities

You work hard for your money – before making charitable donations, make sure the money you donate to charities is also working hard. Here are some tips to help you make the right choice on the charities to support:

• Have a personal connection. Give to an organization that you know and trust, or where someone you trust works or volunteers or has used a service or participated in an activity.

• Review the Form 990. Larger charities have to file an annual information return called IRS Form 990. You can find all the forms filed since 2000 at www.eri-nonprofit-salaries.com. Although the form looks daunting (It is a tax form!), you can easily review the lines that report total revenue (How big is the organization?), net assets (Is there money in the bank?), money spent on fundraising (Is it a high proportion of the money from direct public support?), description of activities, and compensation of the top-paid people.

• Check the charity’s website. The address for the website can be found on the first page of Form 990 and most charities have them these days. Does the information on the website match the information on the Form 990? Does it match the information that you have been told by the fundraiser that called or the letter you received?

• Visit the charity watchdog groups. There are several groups that rate charities – see Charity Navigator (www.charitynavigator,org), the BBB Alliance for Wiser Giving (www.give.org) or the American Institute of Philanthropy (www.charitywatch.org). Not all charities are rated and the watchdogs use different criteria, but what they say may help you interpret the Form 990 and inform your giving decisions.


About ERI
ERI Economic Research Institute is a leader in compensation and performance metric information. Based in Redmond, Washington, ERI provides salary survey and cost-of-living research reports and software to over 10,000 worldwide organizations. With information gathered from online surveys and an extensive survey library, ERI provides subscribers with assessments on salary, relocation, the cost of living, and executive compensation. ERI's data covers the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and numerous countries in the European Union.. Its industry-leading Executive Compensation Assessor® software reports executive cash compensation based on information from private executive pay surveys, as well as publicly reported information for 6,500 US, 1,150 Canadian, and 2,300 UK and EU publicly traded organizations. For analysis of tax-exempt organizations' executive pay, see ERI's Nonprofit Comparables Assessor™ software representing 19,000,000 measures derived from over 800,000 organizations.

Visit www.erieri.com to learn more about ERI and to review its other talent management and compensation indices.

Ailing States Retirees May Want to Avoid - As Seen in U.S. News

By Philip Moeller, As Seen in U.S. News...

If you're nearing retirement or are considering relocating to a different state any time in the next several years, you need to do some careful thinking about how the recession and housing downturn have affected the finances

of different states. The National Governors Association says it will take a decade for states to recover. Many states have had little choice but to raise taxes and fees in the teeth of the recession, and further increases are likely. Even so, public services will decrease, especially after one-time funds from the federal stimulus program stop flowing to the states.

These financial dilemmas will affect the quality of residents' lives, and could change your thinking about the place you'd like to spend your retirement years.

The Pew Center for the States recently released a study listing what it judged to be the country's 10 most imperiled states:

• California
• Arizona
• Rhode Island
• Michigan
• Oregon
• Nevada
• Florida
• New Jersey
• Illinois
• Wisconsin

California is the unfortunate poster child for states that have been effectively bankrupted during the past few years. Pew ranked all 50 states using six factors that it said had played major roles in California's spiraling financial decline: 1) high mortgage foreclosure rates; 2) worsening unemployment; 3) loss of state revenues; 4) the percentage size of the state's budget shortfall; 5) a legislative supermajority requirement that makes it hard to enact tax and budget cuts, and 6) a Pew ranking of how poorly each state managed its money. California had the high score of 30—a bad thing in this ranking—and scores in the other nine states ranged from 28 in Arizona down to 22 in Wisconsin. Pew noted, however, that many other states also were hurting and, in fact, the national average state score was 17.

[See Best Places to Retire.]

While Pew focused on the more troubled states, it's worth noting the 10 states that had the lowest, or best, scores on its ranking system:

• Wyoming (6)
• Iowa (7)
• Nebraska (7)
• Montana (9)
• North Dakota (9)
• Texas (9)
• Pennsylvania (11)
• Utah (11)
• South Dakota (12)
• West Virginia (12)

Of these states, Wyoming, Texas, and South Dakota have no state income tax. RetirementLiving.com has a detailed look at the various taxes levied by each state. To help provide a rough guide of how far your dollars will go in other places, SalaryExpert.com has a free set of city cost-of-living reports that include comparisons with other cities.

There are, of course, many other reasons why a location might or might not be attractive. But it can't hurt to see which places might be most friendly to your finances.