Recruiting and retaining employees with stock options is not what it used to be.
By David S. Ortiz
Not so long ago, one of the most effective ways a company could attractand keep employees was to entice them with stock options whose value seemed to keep rising with the gravity-defying stock market.
A little more than a year later, how things have changed.
With the stock market locked in the doldrums, the once morale-boosting gift
of stock options has turned into a weight that adds to employee malaise. While many employees may consider themselves lucky simply to have jobs,
the challenge for employers is figuring out how to alter options to obtain and retain the best managers without at the
same time infuriating
shareholders—and determining what to substitute for stock rewards going forward.
According to some surveys, the answer to the reward question is easy.
Give them cash. A February study of 682 workers by BridgeGate, an Irvine, Calif., high-tech executive search firm, found that half the