Survey Says 20% of Sampled Companies Grant Equity Awards to Nonmanagement Employees

The 2014 Meridian Compensation Partners Trends and Developments in Executive Compensation (PDF) finds that 20% of a sample of 123 large companies provide some form of equity compensation to at least some nonmanagement employees (the study was not more specific than that).

The authors state that "granting long-term performance awards below the management group (e.g., to all long-term incentive eligible employees) is not a common practice in part due to line-of-sight and a perceived inability for those participants to drive results." That sentiment is almost universal among executive compensation consultants despite the overwhelming research that employee engagement below the management level is a key, if not the key, driver of company success and that the "line of sight" problem is largely misleading and unsupported by evidence.