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      Health Catalyst

      Engaged Employer

      Health Catalyst reviews

      3.3

      44% would recommend to a friend

      (782 total reviews)
      avatar

      Ben Albert

      28% approve of CEO

      24% positive business outlook

      Ratings by demographic groups

      Health Catalyst has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 782 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Health Catalyst employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Healthcare industry (3.4 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      782 reviews
      2.0
      May 29, 2018

      Not entirely unlike a dystopian novel

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      I deeply believe in the mission and want the company to succeed changing healthcare.

      Cons

      Here are the three layers: 1. Stellar C-suite leadership that actually care, though are often substantially disconnected from reality on the ground by the... 2. ...layers of inexperienced, paranoid leaders (Peter principle) that (out of delusion or ignorance) up-sell themselves to the execs. These layers manage the... 3. ...hard-working front line people who genuinely care about the mission. When these front-line contributors either show too much promise or ask too many questions they are marginalized under the guise of "humility". You can imagine how discouraging this can be and those who stay around simply shelve their passion and resign themselves to "sit and turn the crank" while milking the outrageously good benefits. This appears to be the root cause of the culture of fear and underutilized talent. Another contributing factor that is discussed around the watercooler is the overly submissive yes-person culture created by the over-emphasis on "humility" as a core value. Bad ideas thrive in this environment because few challenge ideas. Expect marginalization if you consider yourself a creative out of the box thinker. This has led to a strange swirling mix of cultures where many truly want to see the company succeed, but are often discouraged by the lack of management self-awareness. Managers profess Catalyst values loudly and often with the belief that their actions will be overshadowed by their words. Having sat in so many meetings analyzing catastrophic strategic failures, it has become clear that there are mission critical gaps in leadership experience in the middle layers, and I worry that this may eventually cause the company to implode.

      avatar
      Health Catalyst Response
      8y
      Thank you for sharing these thoughts. One of the reasons I personally read and respond to every review on Glassdoor, in addition to reading every free-form comment submitted in our semi-annual Gallup surveys to all team members, is because it helps me and it helps us as a leadership team stay more directly connected to the perspectives and experiences of team members at every level at Health Catalyst. This includes receiving feedback that has not been filtered through many layers of management, which does often happen in many organizations (including Health Catalyst). We have also included an ability on our intranet site to submit anonymous questions, and I read and respond to every question submitted. These channels often offer unfiltered, unvarnished feedback regarding situations on the ground that are real and important to understand. Reading and listening to this feedback also helps us recognize patterns in the feedback that reinforce the need to address an issue. Some of the feedback you have shared seems to fit with a pattern of feedback from these other sources regarding the importance of improving the skills and effectiveness of our managers at Health Catalyst. This was a theme in the most recent Gallup feedback, and led to us conducting a follow-up anonymous survey to team members, in April, to better assess their direct experience with their manager, as compared with the best manager in their career experience. We shared the survey results with all team members and discussed them as part of the April 20th 2018 All-Team-Member meeting, if you'd like to see the full results. On the one hand we were encouraged to see that 61% of team members rated their current manager an 8, 9 or 10 (with 10 representing the best manager of their career). On the other hand, we were concerned to see that 9% of team members rated their experience with their current manager a 1, 2 or 3. This feedback has resulted in our focus on developing additional training materials, mentoring time, and implementation of a 360-degree feedback mechanism, by the end of 2018, for every manager at Health Catalyst. As we collect this feedback, we will emphasize the principles and practices of the most effective managers. This includes the characteristics of servant-leadership and of humility, with increased importance within management of practicing these characteristics. Managers should encourage creative discussion and multiple perspectives when interfacing with members of their teams, rather than shutting down creative or opposing ideas. This is critical to our success as a company, that managers and leaders remain open to new ideas rather than becoming defensive or dismissive. It is an inappropriate and incorrect application of the characteristic of humility for a manager to expect blind obedience to his or her perspective from the team. Rather, effective managers need to be open to new ideas, careful listeners, and enable the best ideas to rise to the top and influence direction. We will emphasize this perspective in our next All-Team-Member meeting this Friday, and reinforce it in the next training meeting with managers. I want to thank you for caring about the mission of the company. I care about the mission as well. I hope you will stay with us, bring your best ideas, even if they are contrary to current practice, and we as a leadership team will work to reinforce and provide support to you to bring your creative ideas to your teams, and reinforce to our managers how critical it is for them to listen carefully to your ideas, to be open and not defensive, all in support of the mission of the company. Thanks again for sharing this perspective. Best, Dan
      5.0
      Apr 18, 2018

      Overall, an amazing company to be at for the long-term!

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Incredible mission! I honestly believe the leadership listens to its employees. Lots of smart folks. Flexible hours. Ability to work remotely. Pay and benefits (from my perspective) are incredibly competitive. The perks are also awesome (and sometimes a little over the top). Leadership is actively working to make this the best place you've ever worked at. I don't feel micromanaged (at least on the team I work on). Great work/life balance. Definitely work-hard and the hours can sometimes be long but balance is strongly encouraged. Feels like a family! The company not only cares about the employee but their families as well.

      Cons

      Product Management: Catalyst is trying really hard to pivot to a product development mindset right now and is kind of stumbling. But I trust we will get through this! Turns out the company seems to be more of a "consulting" company building analytic visualizations in Tableau or Qlik that are custom to a specific client (e.g. not actual software). As the company pivots to building “software products”, the company needs to re-think how the company is staffed, e.g. product managers, designers, software engineers, support, etc.. as well as re-thinking how these software products scale across clients. There also doesn’t seem to be someone that actually “owns” the product development strategy and the overall product roadmap. There all these “technologies” that we have but I don’t seem to know who “owns” how all these get incorporated into a cohesive product strategy. My perception is that there are so many "directors", "managers" and "VPs" and not enough "boots on the ground" and appropriately skilled contributors. If we're going to be a "product company" we certainly aren't staffing these product teams accordingly e.g. software developers, QA, actual "worker bees" (for lack of a better phrase). We also don’t seem to have a CTO. We have a “CTO council” that seems to decide things by “committee” e.g. big tech/architecture decisions. This, to me, is an example of where sometimes the idea of “collaboration” can be a little too much and hinder actual productivity. Culture: For the most part, people seem to live the values of the company. However, one of the things I’d recommend keeping any eye on is a “culture of blame” that I’m starting to see. In certain cases where I’ve seen something go wrong, there’s been this knee-jerk reaction to blame someone right away before pausing and doing an actual root cause investigation of the issue. I wish in these cases the focus was more about learning and how to be better instead of adding to the culture of blame. Diversity: I wish the company was more diverse. Catalyst has a blog post that references the business case for diversity and the work that we need to do. There is some good work that is starting to happen and the intentions of the company around diversity and inclusion are, no doubt, sincere and well-meaning! But I fear that there’s a lot of conversation about diversity happening at the leadership level that is happening, without an actual diverse group to help inform the discussion on what it means to be a diverse company.

      avatar
      Health Catalyst Response
      8y
      Thank you for sharing this feedback with us. I've read your comments a few times, and we've discussed your comments also in our weekly leadership team meetings, and they, coupled with some similar feedback received through other channels, have helped inform some decision and changes recently implemented. Let me share a few observations related to your comments. First, thank you for sharing your positive comments about your experience at Health Catalyst. I'm grateful to hear that your experience has been positive. We as a Leadership Team certainly want every team member to feel cared for, loved, respected and given autonomy to do the best work of their career. And we care about the loved ones of our team members as well. Thank you also for your specific and insightful feedback. Let me address each category of feedback. First as it relates to our "product" orientation, your comments are resonant and fair. Three years ago we were in a very different situation regarding the maturity of our technology products. It was critical for us to make a meaningful pivot and invest heavily in the development of the next-generation data platform, as well as to begin our investment in building true Health Catalyst software at the apps layer. Under Dale's leadership we've made incredible progress, and it's been exciting to witness the launch of the DOS platform and each of the apps suites that we've launched thus far (Patient Safety is next in June!). While I'm excited about all the progress, I acknowledge that we're still early in the journey to mature product leadership, including the buildout of the product management function and mindset, and maturing our approach to technology roadmap development and leadership. We are actively working on these areas. Regarding our status reinforcing the culture, I appreciate you sharing the concern around not allowing a "blame" culture to emerge. We've felt this concern as well. Our recent emphasis on learning from failure, as discussed in our two most recent All Team Member Meetings, led by Carl Anderson and Dale, I think is a step in the right direction. Further, I'm excited that we're incorporating "SOAP" (Suboptimal Outcome Analysis Process) learnings as part of every ATM meeting, to help us integrate learning from failure as part of our culture. And I am also hopeful that we will continue to make progress regarding our diversity efforts as a company. This is a personal area of focus for me, and I appreciated your reference to the article recently published on this topic, with the link here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/diversity-workplace-principle-driven-approach-talent-pool-dan-burton/ We will continue to make progress through a principle-based approach to diversity, including the principle of advocacy in situations where we need to accelerate our progress. Thank you again for your thoughtful, insightful feedback. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss further. Best, Dan
      2.0
      Mar 19, 2018

      The only thing you control is your attitude

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Awesome benefits. I love the transparency the top level of leaders demonstrate. They are great examples of the Catalyst Way. The people here are friendly, cooperative, and easy to work with. They have a lot of good things going for them that can keep people satisfied despite cons they may experience.

      Cons

      The reorg made sense during All Team Member meetings, but wasn't implemented correctly maybe. Some people got moved to positions they wanted but aren't qualified for, and other people got moved to positions they didn't want and aren't qualified for. Those cases in particular were never explained and led to frustration. Even if you asked for reasoning from a manager in some cases, there was a lot of sidestepping around the core issue (likely because they didn't know themselves). And if you ask too much, people start to think you have a bad attitude when all you want is clarification. Your career path became totally outside of your control and in the control of your managers who may or may not have known you or your skill sets that well. And it seems like no movement will take place for another year or so, so you just have to deal with it until then. It seems education isn't taken into account except for initially getting hired. Along with the previous point, it didn't make sense why people were moved or not moved. Background didn't seem to be the determining factor at least. Now with the salary levels, I know recent hires with the same background but different levels of degrees, but both have the same amount of work experience (minimal), so they are placed in the same salary level. And because of the reorg, the person with the graduate degree actually has a lower salary range due to their new job title. And all these things were outside of their control, with no explanation of why this happened.

      avatar
      Health Catalyst Response
      8y
      Thank you for this review and for sharing this feedback. I see confirming patterns in other team member feedback, particularly the qualitative comments in the most recent Gallup survey. I concur with your hypotheses that the imperfect reorganization we implemented in July of 2017 put many team members in unfamiliar roles that a good number had not independently pursued or requested, and that this would very likely impact answers to the two Gallup questions you reference above. As we've discussed in ATM meetings and Q&A sessions, the first part of 2017 was very challenging for the company. The 3-month pause in our sales pipeline (the "Trump Pause") significantly impacted our ability to execute against the Operating Plan we had developed, and instead required us to make mid-year adjustments that had a ripple impact on many team members. I'm grateful we preserved team members' positions at the company, even during that rough patch, but we did need to reorganize and to respond to market demands for our products and services, some of which we didn't fully anticipate. I strongly hope that as the company continues its significant growth acceleration since Q1 of 2017 (including our record-breaking Q1 2018 that just closed!!), this growth will enable more flexibility for team members to move to positions that better align with their experience, their skillets and their interests. I also hope that the significant project we are completing around consistent job leveling across every job family and every function will enable hundreds of productive career-development discussions between team members and their managers, and provide a structure and framework for these discussions to be concrete and more clear in terms of understanding a 5-year career trajectory, with a better definition around educational and experiential requirements to qualify for promotion to the next job level. This will take a little time to really become a productive framework for each team member, but we are already seeing some encouraging signs that more career discussions are occurring than perhaps ever before in the company's history. I appreciate your patience and your willingness to work your way through some bumps in the road as we grow and develop and mature as a company. I acknowledge the validity of your feedback, and appreciate you sharing it, and would want to convey our sincere desire and effort to improve in the areas you've highlighted. Thank you again for your contributions to the company's mission. Best, Dan
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      Glassdoor has 845 Health Catalyst reviews submitted anonymously by Health Catalyst employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Health Catalyst is right for you.