Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the UKG Analyst Conference at UKG Connections in Las Vegas. It is hard to believe that over 20 months have passed since I attended the last one which at the time was for Ultimate Software. During that event, much was discussed about the upcoming merger of Ultimate Software and Kronos yet a name hadn’t even been decided. Fast forward to December 2021 and here we are discussing the first full year of UKG as a company. There has been a lot of progress in one of the most difficult times to actually merge two great companies into one and, I must say, the results are impressive!
UKG President Chris Todd kicked us off with his update which began with the vision of the new company – a vision that I saw transcended throughout all of their offerings and roadmap for 2022 and beyond. That vision is to:
- Inspire every employee
- Support every business
- Elevate every workplace
Their first-year results as the new company showed that they have been successful with good growth in revenue and net new customers. Customer retention was also very strong. The company has grown in terms of employee count globally which confirms what CEO Aron Ain said in the previous conference that this merger wasn’t a consolidation and cost-saving story, it was a growth story.
All of this is very good news and on top of that, UKG is investing heavily in product innovation, approximately $600M in 2022.
UKG Vision
One of my favorite parts of this conference is hearing from Cecile Alper-Leroux, Group Vice President, Research and Innovation. I have known Cecile for some time and am always amazed at her thinking on the topic of what motivates humans. She is always a few years ahead of most thought leaders on trends and that thought leadership is a driving force in the direction of innovations at UKG. In her keynote, she referenced The Great Resignation and what is causing this mass exodus. As she said, people leave their employer because they don’t feel like have a sense of belonging which is absolutely true. The funny thing of all of this is Cecile worked with our HR.com Research Institute 3 years ago on this topic “
Creating a Sense of Belonging in the Workplace: A cross-cultural study of why some employees feel they belong and others feel alienated”. It just shows how far ahead she and her team are in their thinking. Currently, UKG is building the concept of belonging at work into all of its technologies.
Cecile outlined
UKG’s 2022 Megatrends that will influence all employers and employees. Below are the 3 trends:
- Our Growing Reliance on Grey-Collar workers - We must adapt to a changing workforce profile & create new strategies to engage with and keep talent, particularly essential workers with critical skills sets like medical assistants, logistics experts, and first responders who fall between traditional white- and blue-collar worlds.
- The New Ethics of Leadership - The degree of trust and autonomy granted to employees will increase as well as the responsibilities of managers and executive boards to earn it themselves.
- Compliance fluidity On the Rise - We must rethink our approach to compliance to improve business outcomes and get ahead of issues before they become regulated.
UKG firmly believes that organizations are influenced by the systems they use. They believe that business tech hasn’t kept up with people’s work imperatives and that needs to change. The image below demonstrates the various stages of technology leading up to where UKG feels that it needs to be. They have termed this Life-work TechnologyTM which is where the technology acknowledges people have lives outside of work and supports their needs holistically and can anticipate disruption before it happens.
UKG is focusing on developing Life-Work TechnologyTM which is designed to utilize years of data, advanced AI, and listening tools to elevate people’s Life-work or their meaningful contributions to their employer organizations as well as their personal vocations. This is the heart of where they are headed and it really is a big deal.
Product Updates
UKG’s Innovation focuses on 3 pillars all in the spirit of servicing people.
- Build a culture of belonging
- Foster organizational adaptability
- Guide people and offer autonomy
Below is my summary of the innovations lumped by each pillar
Build a culture of belonging
There are many innovations that UKG are implementing to help improve the feeling of belonging.
Addressing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging: Brian Reaves – Chief Belonging, Diversity & Equity Officer. Brian needs no introduction as he is a powerhouse in this area having previously held the role of Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer in the Office of the CEO at both Dell Technologies and SAP. He says that he wanted to join UKG to focus on driving strategies and tactics to fulfill UKG’s aspiration to become an employer of choice for ALL as well as leading DEI&B-related thought leadership and platform innovation.
Brian has an incredible DEI&B framework to get UKG to a place where unique identities and perspectives are not only welcomed but sought out, celebrated, and well-represented. He envisions an equitable workplace where everyone has abundant opportunity to grow and reach their full potential. As stated above, his vision is not only to get UKG there but just as important, he will help build this framework and best practices into the UKG suite of products to make sure that UKG customers and their colleagues have the tools to create a winning culture in their workplaces.
Watch this powerful video for UKG's "Close the Gap" initiative for pay equity
Great Place to Work Integration into the UKG Suite: You may be familiar with Great Place to Work who has been a highly recognized employee experience platform built upon 30 years of research and data to take the guesswork out of culture work. In September of 2021, the Great Place to Work Institute, Inc. joined the UKG Family in a combined commitment to help organizations build better workplaces for all. This is significant because Great Places to Work has an enormous database of activities that make companies great – in fact, Great Place to Work certified companies outperform the market by 9.2% This knowledge base will be integrated into the UKG product suite to provide insights to make companies great. Initially, items that will be included in the UKG suite are: Assess Product included for free to new UKG HCM customers, comparison to the 100 Best benchmark data, unique sessions designed for UKG customers, coaching sessions for Assess & Analyze customers, and anytime early bird pricing for
GPTW For All™ Summit 2022.
Improved Accessibility across the Suite: UKG is dedicated to building accessible solutions and creating more meaningful and connected work experiences for all people. As such they are updating UI across the suite with the
WCAG 2.1 accessibility specification. They are expanding accessibility support across the HCM domain in the areas of Recruiting, Mobile, Coaching & Development, and Payroll. They are also making improvements in the WFM solutions by improving support for interactions on mobile with
VoiceOver and
TalkBack, extending contrast requirements to graphics, improving text and layout adaptability for 400% zoom, and will expand supported technologies, including the screen reader technology Jaws (Job Access With Speech).
The system meets the user where they are doing their work: The product will meet end-users where they do their work which includes integrations with Slack and Teams. This allows users to never lose focus by taking actions where they work, while they work.
Advanced use of Data with AI: Data & AI to be used to track human signals to identify people who are demonstrating signs of feeling alienated (not belonging) to help nudge managers to take corrective action. AI will also be used to provide smart assistance to users for any type of HR-related questions. Finally, it will be used to provide self-learning capabilities such as suggested learning to further one’s career path, etc.
Intelligent use of People Analytics: Business Intelligence and Analytics will provide holistic data views, guided recommendations, and offer predictors. Expanded data includes operational reporting, embedded analytics and shared visualization tools. You will be able to understand everything on a single experience: WFM insights seamlessly alongside Payroll, HR, Benefits, enabled with powerful tools.
Foster organizational adaptability
Help me navigate the changing COVID-19 world: A very powerful resource has been built into the UKG service delivery module designed to help employees and companies monitor vaccine status and company policies. The app (also available on mobile devices) can cover the following information: Remote Work Policies, Reporting and Call-in Pay Policies, Time Reporting Policies. It also has a section for forms including Covid-19 Vaccination Self Reporting, Covid-19 Test Results Self Reporting, Request for Accommodation: Medical Exemption from Covid-19 Vaccination, Request for Accommodation: Religious Exemption from Covid-19 Vaccination. The service delivery module as a whole recently has been the 3rd most purchased module in the UKG suite and it is constantly evolving. I am sure that many could use a tool like this right now.
Give me a complete view of my organization: UKG has built capabilities in the suite to allow one to view the organization in a number of ways: by job position, by person, and collectively job position and person detail.
Flag errors in payroll before they occur: Now wouldn’t that be nice versus having to go through the hassle of fixing these after a payroll run. UKG provides a single dashboard view of the payroll run allowing to proactively see any errors prior to go.
Automatically understand risky behavior: There is a new dashboard that allows you to see all anomalies in a single view. These include Poor scheduling practices & schedule fairness violations, Employees working more than Schedule, Employees working less than Schedule with drill down capabilities all designed to see and prevent issues that could become expensive for your company.
Support organizations with complex, global compliance needs: Baked into WFM is global support for all of the complex local rules and regulations around scheduling, etc. such as Canada Healthcare - Remove shift premiums from shifts that are swapped, U.S. Healthcare - Ensure employees work the required number of weekend shifts in the schedule period, etc.
Let me post requests to the shift marketplace: - UKG has introduced the ability for an employee to posting their shift to the entire eligible group as an open shift to help ensure that the shift is filled. In the crazy time of Omicron, where shifts are opening up everywhere due to workers being ill, this is a very important, flexible feature.
Predictive pay violations guide managers before schedules change: Managers can now see pay violations in their schedule before posting allowing them to make adjustments to keep the company compliant and on budget. In addition, companies can remain compliant by providing employees the autonomy to accept changes.
Guide people and offer autonomy
Make coaching & development an ongoing conversation throughout the year: An all-encompassing skill review and coaching module have been added to the suite which allows managers and the employee to plan 1:1 agendas, review current skills and goals, review peer reviews and develop follow-up plans. In this way, employees receive real-time feedback which is something employees not only need but demand. This can certainly help with retention and performance. They have included an AI-powered conversational analysis to categorize feedback in an intuitive way to help people get and give better feedback, nearly always an area of improvement in the workplace.
Automate data capture at scale to reduce document processing effort: Capturing important data from paper documents is a brutally time-consuming exercise that is really never complete or accurate. UKG simplifies that process allowing large numbers of paper documents to be digitized into the system, including automatically identifying applicability of documents such as the type (e.g. certification versus CV) or who the document belongs to for automatic employee record filing.
KnowledgeBase & People Assist: Employees have hundreds of questions for HR all of the time. Usually, they need answers right away but often this isn’t possible meaning employees have to wait to get their answers. This only leads to employee dissatisfaction and burnout of the HR staff. UKG’s knowledgebase helps workers find self-help content and also open a case for HR to ask for help on items that they can’t find. This helps HR deliver better service, using fewer people.
On-Demand Pay: This is a differentiator for your company if you can offer this. We all know how difficult it is to survive between pay periods when unexpected expenses in life come up – just look at all of the payday loan shops in your town – there are more of these than almost any other business so there is a real problem. Trying to make ends meet at critical times is a real stressor for your employees and their families and can effect performance at work and more.
My Take
It’s hard to believe that 21 months have passed since I attended the last Analyst conference at the Ultimate Connections event where we spoke about the upcoming merger between Ultimate and Kronos. It was very fresh and the deal hadn’t even closed – they didn’t know what they were going to call the new company or really anything else but they were excited about the new venture. Well, fast forward to December 2021 and we were reviewing their first full year as UKG and what a success it has been. Both companies had outstanding cultures, which could have taken a hit with a merger but that didn’t happen. They have successfully grown, added a strong group of leaders to their team, and cemented a vision to help their customers become great! This is what a partner should be and I say well done on the execution. On a personal note, I was honored to be invited and made to feel like I belong.
