Compensation planning fails when the market read, the performance signal, and the committee decision live in three tools with no shared trail. The agent reads Pave for benchmarks, Lattice for ratings, and Workday for current pay, then drafts a brief. Without a Dock row, that brief is a Slack message. With one, it is the calibration record the committee approves against, carrying who decided what, when, and why.
Workday, Pave, and Lattice stay the system of record for the raw data. Dock is the system of record for what the agent interprets from that data. Each Dock row carries a pointer back to the platform record through fields like workday_worker_id, pave_benchmark_id, and lattice_review_id, plus agent identity, the proposed adjustment, the reviewer, and the timestamp. When the committee meets, the agent re-fetches platform data via fresh API reads so current state is never stale.
The comp planning surface
| worker | workday_worker_id | current_base | pave_p50 | lattice_rating | agent_proposal | drafted_by | reviewer | status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R. Okafor (Eng IC4) | wd_82041 | $186,000 | $204,500 | Exceeds | +7.8% to $200,500 | agent:comp-planner | head_of_eng | approved |
| M. Lin (PM2) | wd_91188 | $158,000 | $161,200 | Meets | +2.1% to $161,300 | agent:comp-planner | head_of_product | flagged |
| S. Rao (Eng M1) | wd_77502 | $221,000 | $238,000 | Exceeds | +6.0% to $234,260 | agent:comp-planner | head_of_eng | needs_market_recheck |
One worked workflow
The agent pulls Pave's latest market data for each role, joins to the worker's Workday compensation record and Lattice review cycle, and drafts a proposal row with a target percentile, a recommended adjustment, and a one-paragraph rationale. The compensation lead and the people partner see the same row in the calibration meeting and edit inline. Approval flips the row to approved, which fires the consent gate. Only then does the agent write the new base back to Workday, attaching the Dock row URL as source of truth on the Workday change record.
If the committee rejects, the row keeps the rejection reason. The next cycle inherits that context.
Why it matters
Calibration disputes are usually about provenance, not numbers. When a manager asks why a peer got a larger increase, the answer needs to be a row, not a recollection. The Dock row shows which Pave cut the agent pulled, which Lattice cycle the rating came from, and which committee member approved the delta. Our notes on agent audit and compliance cover why pointer plus decision plus reviewer is the minimum durable record.
The same pattern carries into finance when comp accruals need to tie out, and into broader HR cycles like promotion rounds and equity refreshes. The agent gets no write access to Workday until the row is approved, which is the agent identity contract: principal named, scope bounded, audit on the row.
Aon's Radford McLagan compensation database publishes the technology benchmarks most planning cycles anchor to (Aon Radford McLagan), and WorldatWork's Incentive Pay Practices Survey 2026 supplies the variable-pay reference points committees increasingly ask for (WorldatWork research).
Try this cycle
Stand up the planning surface inside your people ops workspace, point the agent at Workday, Pave, and Lattice, and run one team through it before opening the company-wide cycle.
FAQ
Does the agent change pay in Workday on its own?
No. The write to Workday is gated on the Dock row's status = approved. The reviewer is named and timestamped, and the audit trail survives the cycle.
What if Pave benchmarks shift between draft and approval?
The agent re-fetches Pave on row open. If the percentile moves outside a configured band, the row flips to needs_market_recheck and waits for a fresh draft.
Can managers see the agent's rationale? Yes. The rationale paragraph and the source pointers are part of the row. Managers see the same record the committee sees, not a downstream summary.
How does this connect to other people ops work? Promotion rounds, equity refreshes, and ratings calibration all share the same row shape and the same approval gate. Re-use the surface; do not rebuild it per cycle.
