Health Catalyst reviews

Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful review. I really appreciate it and I'm glad you chose to join Health Catalyst this last year. I'm also encouraged to hear of the positive experiences you've had thus far with the connection to the mission, the goal to be data-informed in all we do, and the innovations occurring in technology and services. I feel the same encouragement and optimism for the future based on these positives. I also find both of your cons and your advice to be insightful and relevant for us to discuss. First, as it relates to the "ghost town" feel of our SLC office given that we've striven to be very remote-friendly, I agree with the assessment that perhaps the pendulum has swung a little too far away from enabling a sense of community in the offices we maintain. And I acknowledge that for most team members, this opportunity to feel connected through face to face interactions is a meaningful component of their experience at Health Catalyst. One proposal that's on our list of 2020 adds, across our offices, would be company-sponsored (but still reasonably-priced) meals once a week, at the office, to encourage team members to gather together and connect, face to face, on a relatively regular basis. We do this for ATM meetings every two weeks, and it seems to encourage team members to gather and connect at the office. I hope we can add this as a benefit in 2020. Second, as it relates to our merit structure, I largely agree with your assessment that we've built a structure primarily focused on the 80-90% of team members, each year, who are solid, strong performers, with secondary considerations of how to deal with exceptional situations, on both ends of the spectrum of performance. As an example, we target the 75th percentile for compensation for team members across all positions, levels and functions, and we have one companywide bonus plan where we all participate similarly in the company's overall success. This is based on a strategic assessment that most of what we do to accomplish our mission is complex and requires many individuals from several functional areas to work together effectively to achieve success. Team-based and more "flat" compensation encourages this team-oriented perspective and collaborative approach. We are also hoping that the sense that the overall generosity of the compensation structure, combined with the connection to a mission that is deeply meaningful, will be sufficiently appealing, even for team members with exceptionally high performance, to decide to stay at Health Catalyst. But there may be some situations where a team member may prefer a more individual-based compensation model, and may be in a position in certain circumstances, to maximize individual compensation elsewhere. We do have some secondary elements to reward and recognize exceptional performance, and I would encourage you to give Health Catalyst some more time before you come to a definitive conclusion about how you feel about compensation for exceptional performers. One example is our promotion process -- we have an infrastructure in place that enables both the 80-90% of team members to realize promotions on a fairly predictable and positive cadence (on average every 3-4 years), but also enables exceptional performance to accelerate that process. And we proactively, as a leadership team, prompt every people manager to go through a meaningful review of every team member on their team every six months, to consider who is ready for promotions. Likewise, in the annual equity grant process, we provide an equity grant for every team member in good standing (excluding the ~5% of situations where a team member is working through a performance issue with their manager) with equity grant ranges associated with job levels on a consistent basis. But we also ask managers to identify exceptional situations where team members have performed significantly above expectations, recognizing this may only be applicable ~10% of the time, but we do account for this in the annual equity grant process. These equity grants will, hopefully be communicated to all team members by the first or second week in January. I sincerely hope that these elements will prove compelling and result in most team members who value the team-oriented culture focused on a mission that is worthy and motivating, to choose to stay at Health Catalyst, including those with exceptional performance and contributions. But I also acknowledge there may be some team members who would prefer the incremental compensation possible in other more individual-based compensation structures. We are willing to make this strategic tradeoff, believing strongly that we gain much more than we lose by adopting the strategy we have adopted. Thank you again for your insightful review and comments, and for choosing to join Health Catalyst! Best, Dan

Thank you for this thoughtful review, and thank you for contributing to our company's success for many years! I am glad to hear that the all team member meetings have been helpful -- and we'll try to keep improving in terms of starting and ending on time! I'm also glad to hear that the benefits are positive, including the education benefit. Each year we'll work to continuously improve in this regard. I also appreciate you flagging the challenges you're facing in terms of the workload you're expected to shoulder. This balance between personal sustainability for team members, from a work/life balance perspective, and financial sustainability for the company, is delicate and difficult to achieve, and must be constantly monitored, with the need for frequent adjustments. We will discuss and reinforce this concept in tomorrow's all-team-member meeting, and will follow this up with emphasis to the extended leadership team in our next weekly meeting. As I have shared in our most recent all-team-member meeting, we as a leadership team would view a reasonable expectation for most roles at Health Catalyst to be fulfilled within a 40-50 hour work week, while also enabling team members to take each of our company holidays as well as a reasonable amount of vacation time off (a total of around 7 weeks between company holidays and vacation days, on average, per year). This should be true across functional organizations -- technology, professional services, sales & marketing, R&D, and general & administrative positions. For those with management responsibilities, and for more senior leaders, there will likely be some additional hours required to fulfill those added responsibilities. If a team member is consistently finding that, beyond exceptional situations, they are needing to work significantly more hours per week than this, then they should flag this to their manager and/or to HR, and we can work together to address the causes of this situation. Causes may include that we are under-resourced, or that we've set the wrong timing expectation, or that there is more training needed to enable effectiveness, or that this is not the right job fit. Whatever the cause, we can work our way through it in order to improve. We also recognize that certain team members may choose to work more than 40-50 hours per week, of their own volition, perhaps to enable them to take more time off per year while still meeting their job expectations, or perhaps because they want to qualify for promotion more quickly than would normally be the case. This is certainly a choice that any team member can make, but it should not be a requirement. I also agree that we need to become more standardized in our use of technology, and less like the wild west. This will be an area of focus as part of 2020 planning. I also really like your suggestion for all managers to hold small group discussions, and perhaps we can encourage managers to do this proactively, reinforcing that we at Health Catalyst would be happy to reimburse the expenses associated with these small group lunches. I still hold lots of lunches with team members -- typically 1-2 per week, as part of my overall goal to hold 200 skip-level 1:1s each year -- and I continue to find these 1:1 discussions incredibly helpful. My 1:1s sometimes include a meal, other times are just a discussion, but regardless, they are an incredibly useful way to hear direct feedback from teammates about what's going well and what can be improved! Thank you again for your review and for your service these past 5+ years. I really appreciate your commitment to our company! Best, Dan