HUMAN CAPITAL PULSE: TECHNOLOGY · ISSUE 3 · MARCH 2026
A monthly Human Capital benchmark for HR and People leaders in Technology: the sector's talking points and how culture, workforce and talent compare across your peers, built on Deltabase data covering 5,500+ companies and 11M employee reviews.
Editor's note
March put reward fairness on the agenda. SAP revised a stock incentive plan after staff objected that managers could qualify while missing targets, Microsoft reorganised its HR function for an AI era, and Meta granted executives options potentially worth hundreds of millions on the day it cut around 700 jobs. Pay & Rewards is a sector strength, but 91.3 pts separate the top and bottom of our peer set. This month's Spotlight: Salesforce vs SAP.
Leroy Hall, Deltabase
The month in three
1. SAP's bonus framework draws staff backlash
What happened: SAP's new stock incentive plan let managers and senior staff (levels T4 and T5) qualify without meeting all their benchmarks, while staff at T1 to T3 had to exceed expectations. After complaints, CEO Christian Klein asked the people team to revise parts of the framework, according to Bloomberg. An internal survey found 59% of employees trusted the executive board, down from over 80% in April 2021.
The Deltabase lens: Culture: SAP's overall NSS fell from +16.0% to +10.1% in 2025 (2,377 reviews), and Pay & Rewards from +22.2% to +18.5%. Workforce: 16.5% of SAP's workforce sits in Professional Services and 5.6% in Sales.
So what: Reward rules that look different for managers and staff are read as a culture signal. Test perceived fairness before launch, not after.
2. Microsoft reorganises HR for an AI era
What happened: Chief People Officer Amy Coleman announced an HR restructure in an internal memo. Chief Diversity Officer Lindsay-Rae McIntyre leaves at the end of March, engineering HR teams now report to one leader, people analytics moves into the employee experience unit and a new "workforce acceleration" team is created. "We need to scale for adaptability," Coleman wrote, according to Business Standard, citing Business Insider.
The Deltabase lens: Culture: Microsoft's D&I NSS fell from +43.4% to +30.1% in 2025. Workforce: Transformation roles make up 5.5% of its workforce, against 1.7% at Meta Platforms and 0.9% at Alphabet. Talent: 51.0% of staff list software development skills, the highest share in the peer set.
So what: Putting people analytics next to employee experience is worth copying, if it changes decisions on skills and reward.
3. Meta's executive options and another round of cuts
What happened: Meta disclosed options grants to six senior executives, its first since its 2012 IPO; three could each receive up to $921 million if every share-price tranche vests, according to an Equilar analysis cited by The New York Times. Hours after the filings it cut about 700 employees across Reality Labs, recruiting, sales and Facebook.
The Deltabase lens: Culture: Meta's employees rate pay highly, with Pay & Rewards NSS of +80.1% in 2025, the sector's highest, but Purpose fell from −37.8% to −59.8%. Workforce: monthly turnover was 1.21% in January 2026 and 0.80% in February.
So what: High pay does not buy purpose. When executive and employee reward diverge in public, watch Purpose scores, not just pay.
Stat of the month
91.3 pts: the gap in Pay & Rewards NSS between Meta Platforms (+80.1%) and Oracle (−11.2%) in 2025, while the sector median rose from +40.3% to +48.2%.
| Company | Culture: Pay & Rewards NSS 2024 | Culture: Pay & Rewards NSS 2025 | Talent: share with AI skills |
|---|
| Meta Platforms | +81.0% | +80.1% | 19.1% |
| Salesforce | +69.8% | +69.8% | 34.7% |
| Alphabet (Google) | +67.9% | +69.5% | 23.5% |
| Microsoft | +30.0% | +33.8% | 32.4% |
| SAP | +22.2% | +18.5% | 15.7% |
| Oracle | −19.2% | −11.2% | 12.6% |
Source: Deltabase Culture data, Employee Net Sentiment Score (−100% to +100%), Pay & Rewards topic, 2024–2025; sector median of Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP and Arm Holdings (Alphabet culture figures are based on Google LLC reviews). Deltabase Talent data, share of workforce listing AI skills.
Spotlight: Salesforce vs SAP
Opposite reward profiles. On Culture, Salesforce's NSS fell from +15.8% to +13.3% in 2025 (2,460 reviews) and SAP's from +16.0% to +10.1% (2,377 reviews). Salesforce staff rate Pay & Rewards at +69.8% but Work-Life Balance at only +1.6%; SAP is the reverse, at +18.5% and +52.1%. On Workforce, Deltabase Employee Turnover data puts headcount at 79,647 and 145,156 in February 2026, with monthly turnover of 0.95% against 0.41% and median tenure of 4.1 and 5.6 years. On Talent, 38.6% of Salesforce staff list cloud skills, against 27.2% at SAP.
For your People team
- Publish eligibility rules for every incentive tier and test them with non-managers before launch.
- Benchmark Pay & Rewards alongside Purpose and Supportive Leadership, never on its own.
- Make reward decisions with sentiment data in view.
See how your Human Capital compares with your Technology peers. Book a 30-minute benchmark walkthrough across culture, workforce and talent. Book a walkthrough →
Sources: People Matters, citing Bloomberg (2 March 2026); Business Standard, citing Business Insider (26 March 2026); The Next Web (27 March 2026); Deltabase Culture data; Deltabase Workforce data; Deltabase Talent data; Deltabase Employee Turnover data.