As usual, the event featured many fun opportunities for networking with an awesome opening and closing event, a massive expo hall filled with UKG experts and partners, 200+ educational breakout sessions, and inspiring keynote sessions including a fireside chat with Brené Brown, (if you didn’t know of her already, Brené’s TED talk on the Power of Vulnerability is one of the top five most-viewed TED talks in the world, with over 60 million views and she has six #1 New York Times bestsellers and is the host of two award-winning podcasts, Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead.)
About UKG
UKG came to be as a merger between Workforce Management powerhouse Kronos, Inc. and HCM and Payroll leader Ultimate Software 42 months ago. Both companies had an excellent culture (they were both consistently in the very top echelon of the Great Place to Work ratings year over year). This hasn’t changed under the new merger which is excellent news for UKG customers as they always look to infuse this into their products and services (which can be an enabler of any client to maximize their own employee experience).
UKG has a global reach and a large customer base (over 80,000) with product offerings including Payroll, HCM, Workforce Management (WFM) and HR Service Delivery. They are one of the few solution providers that can handle all company sizes from small business, midmarket and enterprise. Currently they operate in the Americas, EMEA and APAC with over 15k employees – so if you have a local or global footprint, UKG can be considered to be an option.
UKG believes that a people-focused culture, innovation passion, knowledge, and customer care are what make them different. Consider these facts:
- $4B+ Annual Revenue in FY2023
- 80k companies use UKG solutions
- UKG customers do business in 150 countries
- 50%+ Of Fortune 1000 are UKG customers
- 15k+ Employees
- 70+ years Experience in HCM & workforce management
- 8,700+ Companies using UKG Pro
- 75% Of employees dedicated to building products and providing services
- 5-star Culture - Newsweek Greatest Workplaces for Diversity; Women
- #40 Forbes World’s Best Employers, #6 in IT, Internet, Software & Services Category
- 100% Corporate Equality Index, Best Place to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality by HRC
- 100% Disability Equality Index, Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion by Disability:IN
- 4x Top Company for Women Technologists by AnitaB.org
Growth
As I have said in the past, their growth trajectory has been an amazing story. They continue to add new customers to their list, and in turn, customers continue to invest more into the suite by adding new modules. And, as a result, UKG continues to invest by adding more solutions to their suites and employees to service the needs of their customers.
UKG attributes a significant effect on their growth to their Partner for Life Approach. They say that the core pillars of their partnership that impact retention with any client are:
- Their Culture: Work with engaged, tenured experts who are invested in your success.
- Proactive Partnership: Their teams are structured like your team so you get personally proactive experiences.
- Inclusive Approach: Their partnership, support, training, and more are all included in your software subscription
Their Core Mission
UKG has a mission “To inspire every organization to become a great place to work through technology built for all”. To do this, every employee of UKG is acutely aware of the idea of inspiring greatness in every workplace, in every person, in every solution, in every interaction. Everything that happens at UKG from a customer service call to developing new products and services in rooted on this principle.
Product Strategy
There is so much innovation going on with UKG products and we will continue to see more going into 2024. Below are a few highlights:
- In 2023 UKG doubled its investment in new product innovations and launched over 300 new features based on customer requests as part of over $2.5B R&D investment over the past 5 years
- UKG is infusing GenAI across both of their HCM suites with a goal to make GenAI more accessible and approachable.
- UKG One View uniquely solves global pay. It allows customers to combine consistency in operations and flexibility with in-country pay providers, providing schedule to fund in one pane of glass
New Announcements
There were so many additions that were made, I realized that there were too many for the scope of this report so I decided to focus on a few key highlights. You can read my May 2023 report for more detail as a number of the announced features that were previewed in May.
UKG Bryte
UKG Bryte is their Generative AI assistant (developed in tandem with Google) which is built into UKG Pro and UKG Ready. Every vendor has been talking about Generative AI capabilities, but UKG feels that their offering is deeper because it not only leverages Generative AI models themselves but also, leverages 2 other layers of data, UKG’s proprietary HCM, WFM and Great Place to Work data, and customer proprietary data. The deep data from the UKG layer and the unique company-specific data from the company layer opens up the capabilities of this AI.
Here is an example of how Bryte would help using customer data. The company’s user handbook, benefits policy or other proprietary data can be loaded into Bryte to search and summarize, and perform a guided workflow or recommendations. The employee can ask “What is the maternity leave policy”, Bryte can then return that information but then can say “Would you like us to help you start the process?” in a guided workflow.
UKG is using GenAI for ALL employees, not just one type like administrators, they want to apply AI to help every type of employee, specifically deskless workers and their managers. Below are just a few use cases:
- Leadership: Help managers of all levels understand where they stand on their For All leadership journey, so they can be better listeners, better communicators, and better mentors.
- Career Development: Enhance ALL employees' skills profiles and recommend opportunities to explore potential career paths and learn new skills. This is done by leveraging robust data sets, with AI powered skill suggestions to deliver better career possibilities for ALL workers. AI can then provide personalized pathways to move vertically or horizontally within an organization. AI can then make actionable recommendations for employees to grow their skills toward the opportunities they want to pursue.
- Building Schedules: UKG Schedule Builder recommends the appropriate number and type of skilled staff to match your business volume and proficiency needs.
- Performance Reviews: Accessing the power of content generation with UKG Bryte, it helps employees summarize their accomplishments and generate their self-review.
- Frontline Workers: Help frontline workers find new opportunities to make more money by finding shifts and gigs that they were not aware are available to them.
- Recruiters: Help recruiters identify and hire the best employees with AI-assisted job descriptions and interview guides. Reimagine Talent Acquisition with UKG Pro Recruiting + Eightfold.ai Talent Intelligence
Great Place to Work Hub
The Great Place to Work Hub has been released and it is something that no other HCM vendor has. Most approaches to DEIB efforts revolve around reporting and compliance. This is quite different. This tool is designed to help you gain a clear view of what culture building opportunities are working, what to improve, and how it ties to business value. The key here is - ties to business value which is something very different from what an HCM solution provider normally solves.
They have included AI capabilities in this hub to help you cut through the clutter and zero in on what information you need. UKG’s generative AI (GenAI) models will leverage the extensive Great Place To Work® knowledgebase of benchmarks — based on feedback from 100 million employees around the world — and proven best practices, to guide HR leaders and people managers with proactive, purposefully curated insights and recommendations.
By training UKG GenAI models on 30 years of proprietary Great Place To Work research and strategies, the UKG Great Place To Work Hub will proactively surface suggestions and key data points to help organizations understand where their culture stands today and more rapidly advance equity and opportunity for all going forward. A conversational search experience powered by GenAI will also quickly return key information and suggested actions, based on Great Place To Work findings, in the moment its needed most.
The Great Place To Work Hub will also prompt HR leaders and people managers with proactive AI-powered recommendations and nudges toward specific actions, behaviors, and best practices, helping them advance their own journey along the Great Place To Work “For All” leadership model.
“Equity of opportunity is not only the right thing to do for everyone, it also drives better business outcomes,” said Brian K. Reaves, chief belonging, equity, and impact officer at UKG. “The Great Place To Work Hub is part of a journey to help HR leaders and their organizations see all people — and their differences — as valuable.”
Great Place to Work Hub is now available in UKG Pro and will be available in UKG Ready in 2024.
Unified Mobile App Launch
UKG has successfully launched a unified mobile app which is available in the Apple and Android app stores. It combines WFM and HCM information in a single simple user experience. The amount of usage so far has been highly encouraging (as it has only been out for 30 days) with 5 million punches, 3.4 million timecard views and 1.3 million payslip exports.
UKG Benefits Hub
Benefits are a key differentiator in attracting and retaining talent and even if the benefit offerings can be excellent, employees often get confused and may not make the best decisions.
UKG announced the UKG Benefits Hub at Aspire. It is a modern tool designed to help employees make informed choices about their benefit plans during open enrollment season. The hub guides employees through the process with clear, concise insights, recommendations, and plan comparisons. This is a great tool for businesses to improve the employee experience as it removes confusion and helps employees make better decisions around their well-being.
Global Payroll
UKG services some of the largest companies in the world who naturally have locations dotted around the globe. They look to UKG to help them solve one of their most difficult challenges, paying employees in different countries and having visibility to the entire workforce in one solution.
One of the most painful issues with having employees globally is paying them. There really isn’t a payroll provider that can provide a single payroll solution for all countries so companies that operate globally (and nowadays, you don’t need to be a giant conglomerate to have employees located around the world) are faced with the task of dealing with a number of payroll providers who operate locally inside a given country. This means having a different experience from managing different user interfaces, varying payroll close schedules and requirements, and inconsistent reporting, to payslip-to-funding is different with every provider.
UKG has solved this problem with the introduction of UKG One View which provides a single and consistent view of all of your payroll across all countries. The One View application supports more than 160 countries, providing all employees, regardless of which country they work in, with the same consistent, people-centric experience. This can solve payroll issues for employees located in North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand
Here are the key features of this technology:
- Country-Specific Information Framework – Data required for compliant payroll is fully managed within UKG One View.
- Perpetual Validation – Proactive identification of errors before payroll runs ensuring accuracy, compliance, and timeliness.
- Global Banking Validation – Complete database of all banking information requirements for all countries.
- Integration Capability – Seamless integration with HCM, WFM, and FMS platforms reducing manual data entry and errors.
- Built-In Automation – Gains time back across the payroll cycle enabling later payroll close and accuracy of payment delivery to automated general ledger generation and reporting across multiple countries.
- Centralized Payroll Management - One single source of global payroll truth providing payroll teams with real-time analytics and visibility across all employees.
The time to go live is approximately 4 weeks and there is no need to change any current global payroll providers (unless you want to, in which case they have a roster of partners that customers can use). This is currently available in UKG Pro and will be available with UKG Ready by the summer of 2024.
Deep Vertical Solutions for WFM
UKG understands that various industries have unique needs specific to them. That’s why they are focused on rolling out industry-specific solutions with each release. They have successfully added industry-specific solutions for the following:
- Healthcare
- Manufacturing
- Retail & Hospitality
- Services & Distribution
- Public Sector
The list of enhancements is substantial and will continue. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words so see below to learn more about these.
UKG’s Focus on Customer Success
Innovation is one thing but without high-quality customer support, nothing works well, and clients will simply churn. This was an area of opportunity for improvement for UKG.
As of December 2022, they created a POD approach where there is a dedicated team assigned to each customer with experts in all areas. Each customer has a dedicated relationship manager (ERM) who oversees the account and meets with the customer regularly to review performance, identify parts of the solution that may not be utilized as effectively as it could, and more. This is level of investment is a differentiator for UKG, especially since this model and approach does not discriminate by customer size; all customers deserve a partner dedicated to their success.
The team has a rapid response rate of <60 seconds for critical questions and are now leveraging AI to enhance the quality of their support reps and enable customers to ask questions directly to their AI.
As of April 2023, ALL customers have a dedicated POD assigned to them. The results have been tremendous with an 18% increase in Customer Satisfaction scores and a 25% reduction in resolution time.
My Take
UKG has been on a journey to provide comprehensive solutions for all company sizes from the smallest companies (from 75 employees) up to the largest multinational firms. They have done this by having 2 distinct suite solutions that address the needs of the particular market. Instead of trying to try to tailor a complex solution to fit a small firm with modest needs, they have UKG Ready HCM purpose-built for those needs. For their larger customers, they have UKG Pro that is built to satisfy the most demanding, complex companies. That is a big undertaking, and it is nice to see the solutions that were in the visionary stage come to life. A lot of money has been invested in their products and will continue to be invested moving forward.
They truly live by their vision of being a partner for life as they invest in not only innovations that their clients have asked for but also have invested heavily in the customer support model to help their clients maximize the ROI of their investment in UKG.
UKG has done a lot in 42 months and has earned the right to be the solution of choice for thousands of clients.
