CNN | Long a popular tool for compensating employees at burgeoning start-ups and top executives at multi-national corporations, the practice of granting options to workers has increasingly fallen out of favor.

Last year, a little more than three-quarters of the companies in the S&P 1500, which tracks small- and mid-cap stocks as well as the conventional S&P 500 index, relied upon stock options to pay their CEOs. Compare that to five years prior, when that figure stood at nearly 93 percent. Get the full story »