REBA: What are the after-effects of Covid-19 on reward planning?
October 27, 2021
Edna Twumwaa Frimpong
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about drastic changes in the global workforce and has had a distressing effect globally, impacting the job market with layoffs, pay cuts, and, in some cases, stopping rewards.
On the executive compensation front, we saw that many issuers announced pay cuts for their executives during the pandemic. For most of the issuers, the pay cuts were on the base salary which usually forms an insignificant proportion of executive compensation. Data from our compensation and governance intel (CGI) suggests that most executives withheld or canceled annual bonuses in line with their company’s performance. On the other hand, long-term incentives on average grew, which could be explained by, for some companies, base salaries being deferred into long-term incentives.
By Edna Frimpong, Director of International Research, Diligent Institute
About the author
Head of International Research
Edna Frimpong is an experienced research analyst with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. In her role with the Diligent Institute, Edna oversees and directs corporate governance research projects and partnerships internationally, outside the US.
She joined Diligent Institute in 2021 after six years with CGLytics — a corporate governance analytics firm based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, acquired by Diligent — where she served as Head of Research for the EMEA region. Previously, Edna held research positions at firms including Sustainanalytics and Carnomise. She received her Master’s Degree in Finance and Law from the Duisenberg School of Finance in Amsterdam, and her Bachelor’s Degree in Administration, Insurance and Risk Management from the University of Ghana.