From a practical standpoint, a comprehensive compensation plan should have five key components, but each of these will need to be customized to a firm’s strategic objectives and competitive environment:

Base salary

Incentive compensation (short- and long-term)

Benefits and other nonfinancial rewards

Retirement plans

Equity/ownership

In this article we will take a look at salary and incentives, as these are the primary cost centers in the compensation program. Data from our 2011 IN/Moss Adams Compensation & Staffing Study indicate that a combination of salary plus incentive is the rule rather than the exception. The majority of employees both professional and nonprofessional receive a combination of base salary and incentive pay. Think of base salary as fair compensation for an employee’s roles and responsibilities, while incentive compensation should be geared towards meeting or exceeding stretch goals for the firm and/or individual.

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I’m giving away twelve (12!) Moonjar Moneyboxes. If there’s a child in your life who needs to learn about money, this is a great tool. The three-part cardboard bank allows kids to divvy their cash among three categories: save, spend and share.

To enter to win, leave a comment here on my blog (not my Facebook page).

Click on the tab above this post that says “comments.” Make sure to include your email address, which won’t show up with your comment, but I’ll be able to see it.

If you haven’t commented before, it may take a little while for your comment to show up since comments are moderated. But rest assured, it will.

The winners will be chosen at random Friday night. Over the weekend, please check your email (including your spam filter). If I don’t hear from a winner by noon Pacific time on Monday, his or her prize will be forfeited and I’ll pick another winner.

Also, check back here often for other giveaways.

The deadline to enter is midnight Pacific time on Friday.

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We discussed earlier in the week just how the corporate blog scores over social networking sites. We also told you why, despite the widespread promulgation of Facebook, Twitter and their ilk, theres really no competition with corporate blogging and the latter would continue to work well it its given role. Here are a few more reasons, just in case you werent convinced yet.

Through your corporate blog, you can gauge how to talk to customers and clients in terms of what a given product means to them. It gives you a chance to communicate with consumers on your corporate blog sans the boardroom management lingo, so don’t fritter that away by posting jargon-laden corporate write-ups. It’s a feedback tool like no other, keeps you grounded, and helps you reconnect with your customer base, and perhaps improve your future marketing communications.

Saying this probably opens us to the argument: if blogs have to reach to audiences through Facebook and Twitter, then why bother blogging in the first place?

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Believe it or not, that startling statement is true, according to a preliminary finding from IN Adviser Solutions’ first-ever study of Succession Planning in the financial advisory business.

Of the advisers that have participated in the survey so far, 74% have indicated that they have never conducted a formal third-party evaluation of their firm.

Now, this doesn’t mean that they haven’t done some back-of-the-napkin calculations to roughly estimate what their practices are worth. But the simple fact is that most financial advisers who earn a living advising on the net-worth and assets of others are not truly aware of the value of their own firms (and quite possibly their largest and most valuable personal asset.)

It’s more than just an ironic finding, of course. It’s one that may be indicative of a broader theme in the advice industry.

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