CEOs Whose Luxury Lifestyles Sparked Debate Over Employee Pay

"When it comes to asking for a raise, it's crucial to define a value one is adding to the company, the reasons for a raise (inflation, extra responsibilities, is it a competitive salary within an industry), and be able to communicate this," Evelina Vilke, a career coach, job search strategist, and personal branding expert, told Bored Panda.

She explained that "lack of willingness to address employees' requests and have discussions around pay rise from senior management demotivates staff and potentially can create a toxic working environment."

When company owners and CEOs rarely put in the effort to understand their staff's wants and needs, it leads to passive, unhappy, and even resentful workers. "One of the reasons why people want to change jobs is to get a pay rise," Vilke added.

"Sadly, it's still much easier to secure a new role with a significantly higher salary than to get the same pay rise at the organization where a person worked for an extensive period of time. Hopefully, leadership training programs will change this, and more CEOs will understand that employees are the ones that make their company a success."

A recent Pew Research Center survey only proves Vilke’s points. As it turns out, some of the reasons why Americans decided to walk away from their jobs last year were low pay, lack of opportunities for advancement, and feeling disrespected at work. In fact, seeking a higher salary was such a strong motive, 63% of respondents pointed it out as a top cause for why they left their position.

At the same time, CEOs of the largest firms in the U.S. have seen their pay skyrocket 1,322% since 1978. In contrast, the compensation of the typical worker grew by just 18%. This finding comes from an Economic Policy Institute report, where the authors revealed that CEOs were paid 351 times as much as a common employee in 2020.

"Exorbitant CEO pay is a major contributor to rising inequality that we could safely do away with," the authors of the report, distinguished fellow Lawrence Mishel and research assistant Jori Kandra, wrote. "CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay and because so much of their pay (more than 80%) is stock-related, not because they are increasing their productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills."

Of course, it would be misleading to say that all chief executives show little care or interest in their staff’s lives. You’ve probably heard of stories like the one where the CEO cut his own pay by 90 percent to increase his employees’ wages.

However, "even though there were cases of CEOs sacrificing their salaries to save jobs and/or give employees a raise during a time of crisis, it's not a very common practice," career coach Evelina Vilke told Bored Panda. "The actions of a CEO speak volumes of a leadership style, internal culture, and how invested a company is in its employees and their wellbeing."

A marketing communications firm Weber Shandwick, in partnership with KRC Research, released a survey of more than 1,700 executives in 19 markets worldwide. They tried to explore how people perceive a CEO's reputation to better understand what is needed of them today. "Executives believe that their own CEO’s reputation contributes to nearly half of both their company’s reputation (45%) and market value (44%)," the researchers wrote.

They also found that executives value humility as one of the few key attributes a leader should have. "Building CEO reputation is not about enhancing egos or celebrity," they stated in the report. "Humility is now the new green among chief executives, possibly because they’ve all experienced their 15 minutes of shame in addition to their 15 minutes of fame in this tell-all world."

However, only two in ten executives (22%) describe their CEOs as humble. Since humility is an effective CEO characteristic, we can only hope that there will be an increased number of bosses who can understand, empower, and support those around them.