Compensation and Benefits Consulting Services

Our compensation and benefit experts deliver on the promise of helping your company provide compensation and benefit packages for your employees that are cost effective, market-driven and appropriate for company at your stage of development.

For many employers, payroll and related expenses (such as benefit programs) are the largest recurring expense on their income statement; and yet, many employers allow momentum (‘let’s do what we did last year’) to manage their compensation programs.  In addition, employee turnover is a major issue for employers, due to the cost to find and train a replacement and the disruption that an employee’s absence causes to the business. And, one of the primary reasons for an employee to search for a new position is to receive a pay increase.

Our compensation and benefits consulting practice can help employers in determining what employees should be paid, and in designing programs that can help provide employees with the right things that will help them to want to remain with the company. Our approach to assisting a client with compensation program design issues is based on the following principles:

• We must understand all of the company’s issues, including where the company is in its life cycle
• The solution must work for the company—programs may not be appropriate, even though they are used by competitors
• The solution must be cost-effective
• The client must fully understand the financial statement, cash flow and tax implications of the program 
• Our job is done when the program is implemented—not merely when it is designed

Compensation programs can be useful to employers in other ways—for example, as a method for a shareholder to liquidate his/her ownership on a tax advantaged basis, to support succession planning, and to assure that executives guide the company in accordance with the board’s wishes.

Our Compensation and Benefits Consulting services include:

• Board of director assistance
• Broad-based compensation programs
• Change of control programs
• Communication
• ERISA compliance services (including audits and discrimination testing)
• Equity program design and implementation
• Employee stock ownership plans
• Executive compensation program design and analysis
• IRS, DOL and PBGC examination assistance
• Market pricing
• Merger and acquisition assistance
• Non-qualified deferred compensation programs
• Publicly traded company executive compensation disclosure
• Short and long term incentive program design
• Tax qualified retirement program design
• Welfare program analysis

Our compensation and benefits professionals are prepared to help your Cleveland or Akron company make sure its compensation and benefits programs are serving their purpose: to attract and retain the workforce, to encourage appropriate actions by the company’s leadership and to do this in a cost-effective, legally compliant manner.  Our Compensation and Benefits Consulting Professionals will not only help you in this mission, but will also provide you with assistance during difficult times (for example, government investigations) and insight into current trends in your industry. 

For more information on our compensation and benefits consulting services, please contact Ted Ginsburg at 440-449-6800.