The upward momentum of chief executive pay and reward in the UK’s largest organisations has reached crisis point, the CIPD is warning. Pay levels do not clearly match personal performance or business outcomes, the CIPD says, and this is having a significant impact on the motivation levels of the workforce.
The research, which includes a survey of employee attitudes on CEO pay, explores the behavioural factors that are causing executive pay to spiral upwards and the impact that this is having on the workforce.“The growing disparity between pay at the high and lower ends of the pay scale is leading to a real sense of unfairness, which is impacting on employees’ motivation at work” commented Charles Cotton, CIPD Reward Adviser.
High levels
Seven in ten (71 percent) of employees surveyed said that they believed CEO pay in the UK was ‘too’ or ‘far too’ high, while six in ten said that the high level of CEO pay in the UK demotivates them at work.
When it came to their own CEO’s pay, 45 percent thought that it was too high, while only four percent said that they thought their CEO’s pay was too low.
“The message from employees to CEOs is clear: ‘the more you take, the less we’ll give’. At a time when the average employee has seen their salary increase by just a few percentage points over the last several years, we need to take a serious look at the issue of top executive reward,” Cotton concluded.
Robert joined the HRreview editorial team in October 2015. After graduating from the University of Salford in 2009 with a BA in Politics, Robert has spent several years working in print and online journalism in Manchester and London. In the past he has been part of editorial teams at Flux Magazine, Mondo*Arc Magazine and The Marine Professional.
