Compensation for Business Leaders

Let's Compare Similar Positions

Not all executive positions are equal, and not all similar positions are paid the same. Comparisons of executive pay should take into account: location, industry, size, and the effective date of reported compensation data. Comparisons should also assure that similar skills, effort, and responsibilities exist.

Similar Jobs, Similar Functions

Data regarding executive pay is commonly sourced from publicly available documents. Organizations today are reluctant to share their pay practices and levels for competitive intelligence reasons. The consequence is that compensation data companies use simple benchmark job description title matches. If one assumes that organizations' functions are essentially the same (finance, lead management, HR, risk management, etc.) based on job title/function, comparisons can be easily made. In smaller organizations, this logic is more difficult in that one, two, three, or four business leaders divide up all the functions between themselves in various ways.

The IRS and other agencies sometimes forgo the use of titles and simply rank executive positions based upon the compensation received. Statistics of income data available from the IRS on organization pay is typically described in terms of "Highest Paid," "2nd Highest Paid," etc. The listing below illustrates this approach, the rationale being that no matter what the title is of an executive position, the compensation should be equivalent across organizations of similar size, location, and industry.