Compensating Employees in a Crisis

It’s an old conflict with new, pandemic-created urgency: How to compensate employees during a crisis.

Compensation is one of the biggest variable expenses a bank has, and many incentive compensation plans may have components or goals that are no longer realistic at this state of the business cycle. At the same time, bank employees have served as first-responders to the economic crisis created by the coronavirus pandemic, putting in long hours to modify or originate loans. Boards are figuring out how to reward employees for these efforts while keeping a lid on expenses overall, balancing the bank’s growth and safety against the short-term operating environment.

The Paycheck Protection Program from the Small Business Administration creates an interesting compensation opportunity for banks, says Flynt Gallagher, president of Compensation Advisors. Many banks had employees who pulled all-nighters while working remotely to fulfill demand for these unsolicited loans. Some institutions may choose to exercise discretion by issuing spot awards, which reward employees for a specific behavior over a limited period of time, to bankers who worked overtime to help customers. Gallagher believes these may be larger than a typical award, citing one client that is setting aside $100,000 of PPP profits to distribute to employees who pitched in.

The pandemic created challenges for Civista Bancshares’ commercial lenders and their incentive compensation program, though it presented opportunities as well. Processing PPP applications took time that the Sandusky, Ohio-based bank’s commercial team may have spent monitoring and administrating their existing portfolios or prospecting for new customers. But after the $2.6 billion bank satiated demand from current customers, it opened its doors for new customers, says Civista Bancshares CEO Dennis Shaffer. Some new customers transferred their accounts and service needs as a result, which counts toward deposit goals that retail bank staff have.

Banks with plans featuring objectives or goals that may no longer be reasonable or prudent may be able to exercise discretion under their plans’ “extraordinary events” clause, Gallagher says. The clause applies to events that materially affect profitability, like selling a branch or implementing a new operating system. Banks electing that approach, he says, will also need to quantify the impact that Covid-19 has had on their performance.

At Civista, goals tend to be set in the first quarter, and Shaffer says that changing course on an incentive plan midstream could compromise its integrity. Gallagher adds that public companies like Civista may face scrutiny from proxy advisory firms if they make changes to a current plan or exercise too much description.

But boards have some options as they evaluate their current incentive compensation plans. Some may break their compensation plans into shorter plan periods. Gallagher predicts that banks may decide to shift or roll up individual goals into team or department objectives to reward the broad efforts of groups that may have gone beyond the four corners of their job descriptions.

“I don’t think you’re going to see any general methodology adopted. It’s going to be all over the board, based on the institution,” he says.

Walden Savings Bank is comparing its compensation plan, which uses a scorecard of 12 metrics evaluated monthly, to its expected financial performance, says Stephen Burger, who has chaired the Montgomery, New York-based bank’s compensation committee for 16 years. He says there is already “no way” to achieve at least four of those metrics, reducing the incentive accrual by 25%. The board and CEO of the $603 million bank also decided to cut their pay, but so far no employees have been laid off or furloughed.

“The scorecard is just a guideline,” he says. “We do have latitude to look at other opportunities and reward or cut in certain areas.”

The bank is already trying to keep a tight lid on expenses. They stayed local for their strategic planning weekend instead of going out of town, implemented a hiring freeze, paused a branch transformation project and are mulling alternations to certain benefits or staff reductions.

“We will find a way to reward our employees,” Burger says. “At the same time, if earnings aren’t there, we’ll also do a very effective job of making sure that they recognize that it’s a unique type of year.“

Gallagher cautions against banks making short-term cuts in employment or not rewarding producers. Good employees need to be retained in anticipation of better operating periods. And some banks may actually look to hire new employees right now, given that mass unemployment has flooded the marketplace with talent.

“One banker [I spoke to] said he doesn’t think he is overstaffed, he just doesn’t think he has people in the right places,” Gallagher says. “Companies that are forward-thinking will go hard on people while they’re available, even if they don’t need them. You’ll figure out how to use them to the best of their ability later. Get the talent right now.”