Executive reward

Reward policy, performance management and incentive schemes optimally designed

A strong reward policy affects not only HR, but also finance, tax, performance and compliance. The policy must align with your strategy, reinforce your culture and remain acceptable to all stakeholders.

Is your reward policy ready for the future? How do you structure a management participation plan after a private equity acquisition? Will shareholders approve the new long-term incentive scheme for executives? Does your remuneration align with long-term objectives and your ESG strategy? How do you integrate different reward structures after a merger? And how do you ensure your employment conditions match the talent you want to attract and retain?

We help you answer all these questions. We advise on the strategy, design and implementation of a future-proof reward policy, and support you where possible with digital tools. Together, we create a policy that aligns with your business objectives, motivates your people and meets the expectations of regulators and stakeholders.

Remuneration of senior management

The remuneration policy of senior management requires balancing the interests of many stakeholders. Listed companies are required to periodically present their remuneration policy to their shareholders. We offer integrated support to ensure that the policy aligns with your strategy, but also to clearly identify the consequences for finance, taxation and any legal aspects. And we support you in all steps: strategic analysis and translation into an executive compensation plan or management incentive plan, communication with stakeholders, administrative implementation and incorporation into the financial statements. No surprises, no disconnects and a complete overview.

Remunerations and participations in the event of mergers, acquisitions and transformations

After a merger or acquisition, the remuneration policies of the various parties must be aligned or even integrated. Also large-scale transformations may lead to a revision of remuneration packages or incentive schemes. We analyse existing employment conditions, advise on integration and draw up a retention plan to retain key people. If the management co-invests in an acquisition, we draw up a management investment plan that brings together your wishes. Here again, we integrate our knowledge of remuneration, with accounting and the tax and legal effects, and use digital tools to provide real-time insight and optimise your people's experience.

Executive and non-executive remuneration survey 2025

Our latest remuneration survey 2025 is now available! We invite you to look into our detailed AEX, AMX and AscX executive remuneration analyses and use it as a tool to review and refine your executive compensation strategies and align them with the current trends and developments.

Some key findings:

• Executive base salaries and total direct compensation increased across all indices, with AEX companies leading, and notable rises in non-executive director fees for 2024.
• ESG targets remain central to KPI-setting, but growing regulatory and stakeholder scrutiny is driving greater transparency and demands for meaningful, well-disclosed measures.
• Notably, the EU Pay Transparency Directive is expected to also have an impact on the corporate culture within companies, including on how KPIs are set.

We trust you find this survey an interesting read and look forward to discussing this with you in further detail.

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Remuneration policy suited to your organisation and your people

Remuneration is an important part of the people value proposition. How do you ensure that the salary costs, pension scheme and other employment benefits are optimally aligned with your organisation and with the wishes of your employees and other stakeholders? We can help you analyse employee preferences and design a flexible benefits package. Our specialists can also support you in policy choices with regard to diversity and inclusiveness and offering equal pay for equal work. To put it briefly, we help you to effectively design your remuneration policy, performance management or incentive schemes. This can be focused on attracting and retaining (future) talent, creating flexibility in your organisation to respond to future developments or optimising your cost structure.

People analytics and digital tools

Digitisation and automation lead to more efficient processes, with reliable quality and a traceable audit trail. Digitisation also results in data that we can make accessible to you via dashboarding so that you can substantiate your policy choices, predict the consequences of interventions and measure and monitor their progress and impact. Examples include your diversity policy, the connection between performance and remuneration and scenario analyses. We use all kinds of tools for People analytics - also from our strategic partners. For example, we work with TrueChoice for the employee preference analysis and Faethm to identify the impact of digitisation on your HR policy. Our technology experts will be pleased to advise you on the most suitable third-party HR tools and help you with the implementation.

This is how PwC can help you with your Reward Issues

• Remuneration policy including incentive schemes arranged from start to finish
• Translating corporate strategy into remuneration policy and performance 
• Integration of employment conditions in the event of a merger or takeover
• Design of your management participation in private equity investments
• Optimisation of your employee value proposition to strengthen your position in the labour market
• Support with stakeholder management and communication around your remuneration policy
• Ensuring compliance with laws and regulations