NFP CEO Pay Falls for First Time in Nine Years
10 November 2009 at 12:39 pm
That’s according to the just released Enterprise Care Not for Profit Remuneration Report, which surveyed nearly 1,800 positions in the Not for Profit sector during July and August in 2009.
Confirming the CEO findings, thirteen of the fifteen other senior management positions surveyed also reported falling incomes this year. Over 400 organisations contributed to the Remuneration Survey with nearly 1,800 positions surveyed.
Damien Smith, Managing Director of Enterprise Care, believes that the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the uncertainty it brought for the immediate future has played a large part in this across the board decline.
Smith says that in the eleven years Enterprise Care has been conducting this survey it has only once seen CEO remuneration fall – in the year 2000.
He says there is no doubt that the GFC has led to organisations battening down their hatches, which has played a significant role in this drop, and anecdotally some CEOs and senior managers have taken pay cuts to keep their organisations afloat.
He says falling bonuses, some reductions in benefits and declining professional development funding have also been major factors in these dwindling incomes.
However, while remuneration has fallen on average for the majority of Not for Profit executives, Smith believes there is some good news out of the Report.
He says female CEOs managed to claw back some of the ground lost in 2008, gaining 3% on the male/female remuneration gap.
The Report shows that female CEOs now earn 82.3% of their male counterpart incomes, which is a gain on 2008, but still well below the record high of nearly 87% in 2004.
Smith says there is no doubt that in Australia, as with the rest of the world, the gender gap is significant in terms of remuneration. But the figures this year show a small glimmer of hope for female CEOs making ground on their male counterparts.
However, 2009 was not a good year for women in other management positions.
Fourteen of the fifteen other senior management positions surveyed reported men earning higher incomes than females, with Publications Director/Manager being the only position where women earned more than men.
Smith says there is still have a long way to go in gaining genuine equality in salaries.
Enterprise Care is a governance advisory service for both the Not for Profit and corporate sectors in Australia.
Web link www.enterprisecare.com.au
