The Ohio State Board of Trustees Talent and Compensation Committee recommended a new procedure for reviewing executive compensation involving an annual review for executives compensated above $270,000, and oversight of raises for those executives by the Talent and Compensation committee.

The proposed procedure calls for the chair of the Talent and Compensation Committee to review changes to compensation for executives considered to have “significant influence over the reputation and affairs of the university,” as stated in the meeting agenda. Those changes would then have to be approved by the full committee and the full Board. Compensation for other executive positions in the above-$270,000 range would be approved by the president or provost, as well as the chair of the Talent and Compensation Committee, during an annual review. The Board would provide oversight to reviews for executives compensated at or above the market median.

Oversight on raises is currently provided by the Talent and Compensation Committee, which has been overseeing compensation for about a year-and-a-half, said Joanne McGoldrick, associate vice president of total rewards in the Office of Human Resources. Committee members said they aren’t satisfied by the way oversight currently ran.  

“If I were to give us a grade, I would say it’s somewhere around a ‘B.’ We still have opportunities, but I feel we’re doing a lot better than we had before,” McGoldrick said.

The proposed procedure is the result of tweaking the level of oversight. Committee member W.G. Jurgensen said too much oversight had at times made the process cumbersome.

“One of the reasons we did all this work in the first place is we not only wanted to be more effective in the area of executive compensation, but we also wanted to be more efficient,” he said.

The full board will vote on the proposal Friday morning.