Kanak Rajan

Partner, Mercer

Kanak Rajan, a Partner with Mercer, specializes in developing talent and rewards strategies for executives, workforce and sales teams. His areas of expertise include:

  • Developing executive compensation programs to secure exec talent, enhance performance, and stand up to scrutiny
  • Supporting M&A transactions from due diligence to post-merger integration of talent and rewards programs
  • Creating competitive advantage in the talent market through data-driven talent insights, strategies and programs
  • Enhancing ROI on total rewards spend, balancing employees needs and wants, business outcomes
  • Developing compensation strategies and career opportunities to attract, retain, engage and motivate the workforce
  • Transforming sales compensation programs to better reflect business priorities, as they evolve over time

Recent project experiences include:

  • Harmonization of talent and rewards programs in a large/complex integration of seven biotech companies into one
  • Talent, career and pay models for the tech workforce of an insurance firm to better compete with high-tech for talent
  • Refresh total rewards strategy for a Fortune 50 healthcare company, to reflect current and future business priorities
  • Revamp job architecture, comp strategy and global pay structures for a Fortune 100 company in the food industry
  • Redesign sales incentives for the largest US beverage distributor to align with post-COVID consumption patterns
  • Worked with PE owners to design sales comp for field sales of a leading fintech firm, to support hyper growth
  • Talent strategy, rewards strategy and sales incentives for numerous fast-growing venture- and PE-owned companies

Kanak holds a Bachelors Degree in Engineering and an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business