Is the Rate Of CEO Turnover Stabilizing?
Communicating CEO departures and managing subsequent succession plans have long been on the proverbial communications to-do list, making a recent Weber Shandwick survey of particular interest to
PR/comms managers. The study monitored the level of CEO movement among the 500 largest revenue-producing U.S. companies in the first three quarters of 2006 - including departures, interim CEOs and
insider versus outsider CEOs - and compared the data with previous years, revealing the following findings:
- There was a 16 percent decline in CEO turnover, with 49 CEOs departing thus far versus the 58 who did so last year.
- Of the new CEOs announced in the first three quarters of 2006, 18 percent were interim CEOs (9 out of 49). By comparison, nine interim CEOs were announced in all of 2005, and only two interim
were named in 2004.
- One-third of Fortune 500 CEOs made the "Five Year Club," identifying CEOs who held the title from 2000 to 2005.
If these survey results are any indication, perhaps the tumultuous business environment that catapulted many CEOs from their leadership posts is flattening out - or maybe it's a matter of CEOs
learning a lesson or two from peers who were caught up in scandals and unable to communicate their way out of them. Either way, it's a trend worth watching.
Trends In Corporate Compliance Training
After reviewing millions of employee compliance-training records from 350 mid-sized and large companies in the U.S. and Europe, Integrity Interactive - a provider of Web-based tools for managing
corporate ethics and compliance risk - released a study that reveals the top 12 ethics and compliance topics for corporations in 2006. For all 12, visit http://www.integrity-interactive.com. Highlights included:
#1: Financial integrity, which has been in the top three most popular course topics since 2000 - a reaction to widespread corporate accounting malfeasances in recent years.
#2: Proper use of computers, which falls in line with the trend of increased technology and its subsequent impact on the dissemination of messages - and missteps - in corporations.
#6: Sarbanes-Oxley and internal controls, new to the list in 2006. The popularity of these topics reflects corporate efforts to respond to important legislation adopted in recent years at national
and state levels.