Administration May 4, 2001

New Site Targets CEO Pay

April 5, 2001 - (PLANSPONSOR.com) - If you've got a beef about CEO pay, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) now offers a serious site with a playful attitude, www.paywatch.org.
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On the serious side, the site provides a forum to research CEO pay for a variety of firms. Particular attention is paid to the pay packages of:

  • Bank of America Chairman and CEO Hugh McColl was paid over $96 despite the stock underperforming the S&P index.
  • Conseco’s Gary Wendt received a $45 million signing bonus, stock options worth close to $59 million and $18.8 million worth of restricted shares.
  • William Esrey of Sprint was awarded $3 million in stock options despite a failed merger with WorldCom Inc.

Pay Say

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The site offers an email link to the board of each firm, the company itself, to other firms that sit on the affected company’s board, as well as mutual funds and pension funds that the visitor may have an interest in.

Thanks to a 50% rise in stock options and a 22% increase in salary and bonus, the average CEO made $20 million in 2000, compared to the average hourly worker’s increase of 3%.

Pay Grade

The site notes that over the past two decades, the average pay of “regular” working people increased just 74%, while CEO pay soared 1,884%. To illustrate the point, you can input what your pay was in 1995, and the site will project what you would now be earning if your pay advanced at the same rate as CEOs over the past five years.

The site also offers an arcade of “games” with a serious message, including:

  • ‘GREED! The Executive PayWatch Board Game
  • Smash Corporate Greed! (like Whack-a-Mole)
  • Ping Pong or Pong Pong (“pong”)
  • Find the Health Insurance!
  • Shatter the Glass Ceiling
  • Picture Puzzle

Not to mention Word Games for the kids, or the young at heart, including Word Find, Scramble, Crossword and a coloring book.

Products May 3, 2001

Watson Wyatt Launches eHR Solution

March 5, 2001 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Plan sponsors can now opt for a customized web portal from Watson Wyatt Worldwide's new eHR/Benefits service.
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eHR/Benefits will reportedly allow employers to reduce the time and expense associated with traditional benefits administration, and is designed to “plug and play” with any portal platform.

The announcement comes less than a week after the announcement of a strategic alliance with Workscape (NewsDash March 1) to deliver/develop www.employee.com . 

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The Watson Wyatt service includes access to:

  • Tools that allow employers to compare performance data on hundreds of health care providers and evaluate benefits plans across industries and among peer companies
  • Consulting services, including health plan design and pricing, vendor management and annual renewal negotiations
  • Web-based health plan enrollment
  • Maintenance of employee status and election changes
  • Employee satisfaction surveys
    Benchmarking data
  • Watson Wyatt data, including Best Practices benefits research

eHR/Benefits also offers three levels of access on its web portal, including:

  • Employee View, offering 24/7 employee access to benefits, benefit plan enrollment and comparison of benefit options
  • Benefits Administrator View, offering access to plan data and a host of workflow and data management tools
  • Human Resources Manager View, with a quick summary of key plan results, access to research and use of decision-support tools

Roughly a month ago Hewitt Associates announced a service that was also designed to cut down on benefits administration expense through use of the Internet.

More information is at www.eHR.com/Benefits .

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