CEO remuneration benchmarking
Client Confidential
The context
A regulated healthcare organisation approached us to undertake a confidential CEO role profiling and remuneration benchmarking project. With the current CEO having overseen a significant period of transformation for the organisation, the role had evolved significantly.
The board’s key questions were simple:
Are we paying the CEO at the appropriate level for the role
Would the current package attract the right level of candidate in the open market?
The challenge
A lack of publicly available data in the private healthcare sector meant it was extremely hard for the Board to assess their CEO remuneration package. The organisation also recognised that the existing job description had grown organically and blended operational detail with executive accountability, making meaningful comparison difficult.
There was a strong desire to ensure any changes were evidence-led, fully justified, and fair to both the organisation and the CEO, and aligned with the expectations placed on other board members.
How Moon helped
Our client recognised our expertise in advising on senior leadership roles within regulated healthcare environments. Our reputation for building a breadth of relevant data from our previous senior search mandates, coupled with our ability to effectively compare and analyse new market information, assured our client we were the right partners to provide them with clear and independent advice to support board-level CEO remuneration discussions.
Our approach
Upon instruction, our Leadership Consulting Team, led by Simon Quinn, reviewed and updated a draft CEO job description to reflect the current role responsibilities. This included clear accountability for governance, risk and regulatory compliance, responsibility for organisational sustainability and performance, management of the senior leadership team and organisational culture, and ownership of strategic growth, service development and income diversification.
Moon’s work repositioned the job description unequivocally as a Chief Executive role, emphasising strategic responsibility alongside operational oversight.
Moon then undertook a detailed market investigation of key competitors, analysing organisations based on the size and complexity of the provision of services, total compensation rather than salary alone, and drawing on our existing knowledge of comparable CEO packages across healthcare and similarly complex organisations.
Our recommendations
Moon provided evidence-based guidance on the appropriate remuneration for the CEO role.
Our recommendations considered the scale and risk profile of our client, the expectations placed on the CEO, and relevant market comparisons in context of both local and national economic factors.
We recommended an indexed linked revised remuneration package, which looked at both financial and non-financial benefits and was scaled across a 3–5-year review programme to ensure sustainability for the organisation. The aim was to ensure our client was offering a well-positioned package for their current incumbent but also providing scope to build a package that attracts new talent as required in the future.
The outcome
Our client’s new remuneration approach reflects the true scope of their CEO role, supports retention and future succession planning, and aligns the interests of the CEO with the long-term strategic aims of the organisation. The work that Moon delivered within a compressed timeframe allowed the board to focus on their other responsibilities whilst enabling speedy board decision-making.
“This was a fascinating project to lead for our client; delivery timescales were tight to align with the pay and reward review and the board decision-making process. Despite this, a lot of data was collated and analysed by our team to allow us to put forward our recommendations. The work combined rigorous analysis with thoughtful collaboration, making it a rewarding piece of consultancy for both the client and Moon from start to finish.”
If you are interested in remuneration benchmarking for your organisation, please contact us for a confidential chat.