Latest news with #performancepay
Irish Times
01-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Total bonuses at Uisce Eireann top €13m
Bonus payments to staff at State-owned utility Uisce Éireann last year topped €13 million. That is according to Uisce Éireann's 2024 annual report which shows that the €13.08 million in performance related pay was a €2.5 million increase on the performance related payouts of €10.57 million for 2023. The report discloses that Uisce Éireann made performance related payments to 2,244 employees in 2025 in respect of 2024. About 1,631 staff received bonus payments for 2023. The average bonus was €5,830. That was down €650 on the the prior year. READ MORE The annual report states that 'performance is assessed against individual objectives and corporate objectives through a balanced scorecard process'. No bonus went to chief executive Niall Gleeson. The report also reveals that the numbers earning over €100,000 last year totalled 421. That was 18 per cent higher than the 344 in that earning bracket in 2023. The detailed figures show that four staff members earned between €250,000 and €275,000; five between €225,000 and €250,000 and nine between €200,000 and €225,000. A further 22 earned between €175,000 and €200,000 while 35 earned between €150,000 and €175,000. Just over 100 staff earned between €125,000 and €150,000 while 244 earned between €100,000 and €125,000. Overall staff costs increased by €44 million to €158 million as numbers employed increased by 630 to 2,108. The payment to Mr Gleeson remained at the same level at €275,000 made up of €225,000 in basic salary, €27,000 in pension contributions and €23,000 in 'other short term' employee costs. Last year, pre-tax profits at Uisce Eireann decreased by 15pc to €321 million as operating costs rose by 5pc from €983.62 million to €1.03 billion. Revenues last year increased by 3 per cent from €1.56 billion to €1.606 billion. The utility's revenues were made up of €1.13 billion in Government subvention payments for domestic water billing, non domestic revenues of €271.79 million while new connection revenues declined by 20 per cent to €195.24 million. Chief financial officer, Chris McCarthy, said that Uisce Éireann 'delivered a strong financial performance during 2024'. He said that the profit, together with necessary Government support in capital contributions of €572 million 'was invested to fund critical infrastructure projects and enabled the successful delivery of a €1.372 billion capital investment programme in 2024'. He said: 'This allowed us to improve the quality of our water supply, improve our compliance with standards and increase capacity for housing and development to support economic growth.
SBS Australia
24-06-2025
- Business
- SBS Australia
Nearly all of Australia's top CEOs get performance bonuses — regardless of performance
Almost all of Australia's top chief executives are, according to their boards at least, knocking it out of the park in terms of performance. That is despite sluggish productivity, persistently high carbon emissions, rising inequality and Australia's public spending on research and development being among the lowest in the OECD. According to new data from the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, 91 per cent of Australia's top chief executive officers (CEOs) received some form of performance bonus last year. That elevated their pay well above their base salaries (which were already over $1 million). Only five CEOs out of 142 eligible for a bonus received zero. The fact nearly all of Australia's top CEOs are receiving these performance bonuses shows performance pay is more about rewarding conformity and discipline than risk-taking and entrepreneurship. Do we really believe 91 per cent of our CEOs made big bets that paid off last year? A more plausible explanation is that we simply reward executives for not stuffing up. Their customer base is growing in line with population growth and their prices are rising faster than their cost of production, which means profits rise without too much effort. Take the electricity industry for example. It's hard to imagine an industry in which change is more inevitable than the industry responsible for transitioning away from gas and coal-fired power stations to renewable energy. But according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the electricity, gas and water industry spends a mere 0.24 per cent of sales on research and development each year. That is half the economy-wide average. Unfortunately, innovation does not appear to be a prerequisite for CEOs being rewarded with large bonuses. According to Energy Australia, its CEO Mark Collette (base salary over $1 million) recently challenged a room full of other well-paid leaders at Australian Energy Week to continuously ask themselves: "Will this make energy cheaper?" However instead of focusing on keeping costs down for consumers, companies have sometimes resorted to misleading statements. Energy Australia recently admitted to misleading customers by claiming the coal and gas-fired electricity it was selling was "carbon neutral". Energy Australia was buying widely used carbon offsets to make the claim the fossil-fuel fired electricity it was selling was carbon neutral. In its apology, Energy Australia conceded "offsets do not prevent or undo the harms caused by burning fossil fuels for a customer's energy use". While it is clear Energy Australia's spending on carbon credits did nothing to make the company's energy cheaper, it is not yet clear if the board will award a "performance bonus". Another example of the lack of relationship between CEO pay and organisational performance is Australia's university sector. The vice chancellors of Australian universities are among the best paid in the world, with over a dozen Australian earning more than the head of Cambridge University. But there is no correlation between student satisfaction and vice chancellor pay. And while Australian vice chancellor pay has been soaring, Australian universities have been slipping steadily down international rankings for university quality. While performance-based bonuses and incentives are common among CEOs and vice chancellors, the same is not true for lower-paid staff. Instead, these staff are often asked to "do more, with less" even as their real wages have declined. Universities have seen a notable decline in academic staff per student while the gap between the pay of lecturers and vice chancellors has skyrocketed. Extremely high salaries for CEOs and vice chancellors have done nothing to boost Australian productivity growth, or our performance in global rankings for our universities, research and development or innovation. Paying out large bonuses for average performance has done little to help either. Inequality in Australia is rising. As long as CEO pay is rising faster than the minimum wages, that gap will continue to widen. The latest data showed CEO salaries are 55 times that of the average worker. While it is true it is hard to measure the performance of a CEO, it's also hard to measure the care and attention provided by a childcare worker, the compassion of an aged care nurse, the helpfulness of a call centre operator or the enthusiasm of a lecturer. Few CEOs think we need bonuses to motivate the vast majority of Australian workers. But it is heresy to suggest those at the top of a big organisation could simply work diligently without a giant bonus. So, it's not just income that is unequal in Australia. We expect a lot more self-motivation from those at the bottom of the income distribution than those at the very top.
CBC
14-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
CBC/Radio-Canada to scrap much-maligned 'performance pay' for managers
After a wave of criticism for handing out so-called "performance pay" to managers when it was considering layoffs, CBC/Radio-Canada's board of directors is ending the practice altogether after a third-party review, the corporation said Wednesday. Previously, some of the public broadcaster's non-unionized employees — executives and managers — were entitled to bonuses if it met or exceeded certain metrics like revenue targets, audience size and digital reach. It's a practice used by other federal Crown corporations and government departments. But it didn't sit right with many Canadians, some members of the government and opposition MPs when the company, under then-CEO Catherine Tait, was poised last year to slash some 800 jobs because of a supposed lack of funds. CBC/Radio-Canada handed out $18.4 million in performance pay to 1,194 such employees for the 2023-24 fiscal year, according to documents obtained by The Canadian Press — bonuses the federal Conservatives called "beyond insulting and frankly sickening" at a challenging economic time. Tait and her team ultimately called off many of the layoffs after the federal government came through with more money to plug a budget shortfall driven in part by inflationary pressure. Tait was non-committal about doing away with performance pay, maintaining the funds were part of a manager's compensation package and not "bonuses" in the traditional, private-sector sense of the word. Veteran Quebec TV executive Marie-Philippe Bouchard took over the top job last fall. In announcing the plan to scrap the policy, CBC/Radio-Canada said in a statement it wants to focus less on short-term goals like revenue and more on "longer-term public service goals," like improving its "value to all citizens and strengthening Canadian culture." The new compensation structure will reflect that shift, it said. But management and executive compensation is not necessarily going down as a result. "In order to keep overall compensation at the current median level, salaries of those affected will be adjusted to reflect the elimination of individual performance pay," the company said. "CBC/Radio-Canada will continue to set individual and corporate objectives and measure performance, but performance targets will no longer be used to determine part of individual compensation." An outside consultancy, hired to review CBC/Radio-Canada's compensation structure after the brouhaha, said in a report released today that its executive and management remuneration is generally "conservative" and roughly the same or in some cases less than what people in comparable positions in similar sectors earn elsewhere. In order to prevent major executive and management turnover, the human resources consulting firm Mercer said the public broadcaster "should be mindful of not falling below market if it wants to retain and recruit the expertise and talent it needs to deliver on the organization's national mandate." CBC/Radio-Canada's parliamentary appropriation, the taxpayer money given to the company to operate, has barely kept pace with inflation — and is about the same as it was 20 years ago in real dollars, according to a review of past CBC/Radio-Canada annual reports. For example, the 2005 allotment was $877 million — about $1.32 billion in today's dollars, which is roughly what was allocated for operational expenditures by Parliament last fiscal year. The country's population has grown by some eight million people in that time and the media ecosystem has changed dramatically with the advent of streaming and more competition from foreign-owned firms. Prime Minister Mark Carney promised during the last election campaign to boost funding to bring it closer to what's allocated to public broadcasters in other developed countries. The G7 average funding for public media is about $62.20 per capita, according to government figures — Ottawa currently allocates about $33.66 per capita to CBC/Radio-Canada.
CTV News
14-05-2025
- Business
- CTV News
CBC to stop paying individual bonuses after controversy
The CBC logo is projected onto a screen in Toronto on May 29, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tijana Martin The CBC's board of directors says the Crown corporation will no longer pay individual bonuses to employees. The board says in a statement it will discontinue what CBC refers to as 'performance pay' and adjust salaries of affected staff to compensate them. The move comes after the public broadcaster was criticized for paying out millions in bonuses after eliminating hundreds of jobs. The statement follows the release of an independent review by Mercer Canada of the broadcaster's compensation for non-unionized employees, including senior executives. That review says while the CBC is generally aligned with other companies and private sector organizations the bonuses have 'faced scrutiny.' It says if CBC decides to get rid of its performance-based incentive program, the broadcaster should take steps to ensure compensation stays in the 'midpoint of the market.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2025 Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press
Globe and Mail
14-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
CBC to stop paying individual bonuses after controversy
The CBC's board of directors says the Crown corporation will no longer pay individual bonuses to employees. The board says in a statement it will discontinue what CBC refers to as 'performance pay' and adjust salaries of affected staff to compensate them. The move comes after the public broadcaster was criticized for paying out millions in bonuses after eliminating hundreds of jobs. The statement follows the release of an independent review by Mercer Canada of the broadcaster's compensation for non-unionized employees, including senior executives. That review says while the CBC is generally aligned with other companies and private sector organizations the bonuses have 'faced scrutiny.' It says if CBC decides to get rid of its performance-based incentive program, the broadcaster should take steps to ensure compensation stays in the 'midpoint of the market.'
