Where the 6-8 Weeks Goes in Proxy Prep
The CD&A section of a proxy statement requires executive compensation data from Workday, peer group benchmarking from Compensia or Radford, and narrative disclosure structured to satisfy Item 402 of Regulation S-K. The challenge isn't the writing — it's the extraction and reformatting cycle. Compensia benchmark data doesn't map cleanly to the disclosure table format required by the SEC. Someone has to pull the current-year compensation figures from Workday, cross-reference them against the peer group analysis, and populate the disclosure tables in a format that Legal will approve and that Diligent can incorporate into the final proxy. Multiply that by every named executive officer and it becomes a weeks-long manual exercise.
An Agent That Populates the Disclosure Tables from Your Source Systems
An AI Labor Company agent is trained on prior CD&A sections and the specific Item 402 disclosure structure your Legal team uses. Each proxy season, the agent extracts current-year executive compensation figures from Workday, imports the Compensia peer group benchmark data, and populates the Item 402-structured disclosure tables in your established format. Every draft section is routed to Total Rewards and Legal for review and approval before any disclosure is finalized. Nothing goes into the proxy without human sign-off at each section.
The Business Case: Legal and Total Rewards Capacity in the Weeks That Matter Most
The six to eight weeks before proxy filing are not a period when Legal and Total Rewards have capacity to spare — they're managing Board compensation committee preparation, equity plan administration, and any year-end comp adjustments simultaneously. An agent that compresses proxy prep from 6-8 weeks to 2-3 weeks (40-60% reduction) doesn't just reduce external consulting spend in the $30,000-$70,000/month range; it returns the weeks your team needs most to higher-judgment work. The agent is typically live within 12 weeks — making it operational well before the following proxy season.
Can the agent handle the CD&A narrative sections, or just the disclosure tables?
The agent populates the structured disclosure tables and data-driven elements of the CD&A. Narrative sections that require interpretive judgment — compensation philosophy, pay-for-performance rationale — are drafted by Total Rewards and reviewed by Legal, as they are today.
How does this interact with the Compensation Committee's review process?
The agent produces materials for Total Rewards and Legal review before anything goes to the Compensation Committee or Diligent. The Committee's materials are assembled by your team from approved outputs — the agent operates upstream of that governance step.