What motivates employees most? Is it status or money? A recent Dutch study looked to address these very questions by examining the impact of team sales contests on sales growth in the retail sector and found that under specific conditions employees were motivated by both financial incentives and status amongst peers, but most predominantly by status. The style of manager leadership was also found to increase employee performance, with a transformational leadership style having the greatest impact.
 
Key Topics: Sales contests; Employee performance; Status; Incentives; Leadership style

​The prevalence of employee ownership in companies has been on the rise in recent years, with companies increasingly using long term incentives and employee stock ownership plans in the belief that it will increase company performance. A comprehensive study across 14 countries looked to examine the validity of this apparent positive link between employee ownership and company performance. The results did indeed find a significant relationship between these two factors, and this positive relationship held across both publicly and privately held companies.
 
Key Topics: Employee ownership; Long term incentives; Company performance

There is a growing acknowledgement by researchers and practitioners alike that adverse psychosocial work factors (i.e. work stress) can lead to negative physical health implications for workers, such as weight gain and high blood pressure. A Canadian study examined workplace effort-reward imbalance and its relationship with blood pressure and body mass index over a five-year period and found that effort-reward imbalance exposure was related to increases both in blood pressure and body mass index.
 
Key Topics: Effort–reward imbalance; Psychosocial work factors; Work stress; Body mass index; Blood pressure

In many countries, gender diversity in the workplace is a hot topic and the role of women on corporate boards and compensation committees has come under scrutiny from regulators and legislators. A recent study of US companies examined the effect of compensation committee gender diversity on CEO compensation. Unsurprisingly, women were found to be underrepresented on compensation committees, however of the female members that there were, they were found to be younger and less experienced that their male counterparts. Additionally, greater gender diversity on compensation committees was not found to significantly influence the determination of CEO compensation.
 
Key Topics: Compensation committee; Gender diversity; Executive compensation; CEO compensation

In the ever-competitive arena of recruiting top talent, companies are increasingly looking at different avenues that can give them a competitive advantage in attracting high caliber employees. A Canadian study examined the effect of innovative perks, training opportunities, and company ethics on the attractiveness of companies to prospective employees and found that all three of these elements increased company attractiveness. Some interesting relationships between these three elements were also found.
 
Key Topics: Innovative perks; Training; Company ethics; Employee attraction; Organizational attractiveness.