I have little patience for dealing with thin-skinned people. In a similar fashion, I have little regard for those who would care to generate benefits and rewards without putting ’skin’ in the game. I respect individuals who are willing to expend the effort, the values, and the capital to grow an ownership stake in an enterprise. Wall Street boards and management need to take a full and honest accounting of their firms on these fronts.

Goldman, and other banks, can address their image and burgeoning reputation problem by increasing their own ’skin in the game.’ How can they achieve this? They should compensate employees in stock to a much greater extent and have that stock vest over a longer time period.

Typically, senior executives, traders, and bankers are paid approximately 35% in stock and the stock would vest over a three year time frame. As such, individuals would typically have one year’s worth of compensation tied up in the firm.

Let’s see Goldman pay people 65-70% in stock and have it vest over a 5 to 6 year time frame. If Goldman is concerned about losing people, that pay structure would serve as a real disincentive for other firms to hire them.

Make no mistake, Goldman employees would NOT be happy to be paid in this format . . . BUT there would be plenty of people on Wall Street who would take that pay structure right now to work at Goldman Sachs.

In this context, it was refreshing to see Peter Weinberg, a founding partner of Perella Weinberg and former Goldman Sachs partner, calling for bankers to have more skin in the game in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Weinberg also called for longer deferral periods, as well as for senior executives to invest their own capital in the business.

Obliging bankers to have skin in the game would have the additional advantage of improving their standing in the eyes of the public. Following government bailouts of the financial system, we have currently been left with an asymmetric situation: many governments now have considerable skin in the game; few bankers do, yet bonuses this year appear likely to be substantial.

By acting swiftly to defer bonuses over long periods of time, banks can help heal the damage to their reputation. They have the opportunity through this bonus cycle to display whether they are bulls, bears, or pigs Let’s hope it’s not the latter. .

Larry Doyle has worked as a senior banker at Bear Stearns, JP Morgan, UBS and Bank of America. A version of this article first appeared on his blog, Sense on Cents .