Summary
Databricks is a leading data and AI solution for enterprise companies. Their end-to-end data intelligence platform enables teams to organize, clean, analyze, and deploy secure data.
As the company grew, they needed a customized way to execute nuanced compensation planning cycles and communicate total rewards information to a global workforce—and Pave was the perfect fit.
By implementing Compensation Planning, Total Rewards, and Team View from Pave, the Databricks compensation team built flexible, scalable, and transparent pay programs.
Key Wins
- Executed a successful compensation planning cycle for their most complex group (R&D), paving the way for rollouts to other departments
- Updated compensation planning workflows without the help of technical support—something that wasn’t possible with their previous tools
- Provided complete visibility into all aspects of total rewards (cash, equity, and benefits) for employees and managers
- Became a trusted partner to the organization and secured buy-in for future compensation initiatives
Background
Over the past five years, Databricks has scaled in a huge way, growing from 1,000 to 8,000 employees through new hires, geographic expansion, and acquisitions.
Amidst the growth, they realized their existing compensation solution wasn’t built to scale.
They needed a single tool to run compensation planning cycles across departments and regions, and they wanted a way to clearly communicate total rewards details with employees and managers. With these goals in mind, Dawn Fine, Compensation Programs Director, and Josh Metzler, Compensation Programs Lead, turned to Pave.
Challenge
When Dawn joined the Databricks team, she knew their current compensation tools weren’t cutting it.
“The previous tools and solutions had been rejected by the team.”
—Dawn Fine, Compensation Programs Director at Databricks
The existing system was highly manual, prone to data integrity issues, and created a subpar employee and manager experience. With five founders who cared deeply about sharing their investment in employees, Dawn and Josh needed a way to communicate pay, benefits, and equity information clearly and visually.
The previous solution also didn’t support the complexities of a growing, global organization. Databricks has three distinct multinational teams within the broader company—Research & Development (R&D), Corporate General & Administrative functions (G&A), and Go-To-Market (GTM)—and each has different stakeholders and unique data visibility and approval chain requirements. The Databricks compensation team needed to be able to support these nuances and make updates quickly, without technical support.
Solution
The Databricks team took a phased approach to rolling out Pave, starting with the most complex group in the organization: R&D. As Yuki Horiguchi, Vice President of Total Rewards at Databricks, says, “If it works for engineering, it should work for the whole company.”
By implementing Compensation Planning for the engineering department, the compensation team was able to set custom approval chain processes and configure varying levels of visibility for planners in the engineering organization. They were also able to make changes quickly mid-cycle, without external support.
“As nontechnical users, we can directly configure so many different aspects of our compensation cycles and the design of the Total Rewards portal and other features.”
—Josh Metzler, Compensation Programs Lead at Databricks
The results were impressive. In a survey of the pilot group, 100% of R&D team members who gave feedback agreed that the updated process on Pave made compensation planning simple and easy to navigate. Following this successful pilot, the compensation team rolled out Compensation Planning to the whole company, creating a scalable and cohesive process for all Bricksters.
But that’s not all. The team also implemented Total Rewards and Team View to give employees and managers a standardized and centralized view of compensation.
“Every CEO wants to communicate the investment we’re making in people.”
—Yuki Horiguchi, Vice President of Total Rewards at Databricks
With Total Rewards, employees can explore different equity scenarios, understand their earnings potential, and view benefits, base pay, and variable compensation—all in one place. Rolling out Pave’s Total Rewards solution to a pilot group of nearly 40 leadership team members resulted in an overall satisfaction rating of 4.6 out of 5. And now, managers can use Team View to understand their team's compensation details and anticipate potential questions in advance.
Together, Compensation Planning, Total Rewards, and Team View have transformed Databricks’ approach to compensation, making it built to scale.
Looking Ahead
The Databricks team is just getting started.
Dawn, Josh, and Yuki continue to make changes to improve and simplify their upcoming planning cycles, and provide more transparent and comprehensive compensation information to all Bricksters.
“We’re always looking to the future and considering how we can build and improve,” said Josh. And, as they evolve, Pave will be there to help.
“We know as we scale, we can come back to Pave and make the adjustments we need to.”
—Yuki Horiguchi, Vice President of Total Rewards at Databricks
