Keep a watchful eye on UKG. The “our purpose is people” company is flexing its muscles.
Led by CEO Jennifer Morgan, appointed in late July, UKG is transforming rapidly. This is not the same HCM technology company that was on display at the spring analyst day in May, or the 2023 Aspire conference. While the 2024 conference returned to Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, the similarities to last year’s event ended there.
The transformation was evident from the moment attendees walked into the Michelob Ultra Arena for Aspire’s opening general session on Nov. 12. Gone was the standard conference stage setup of 2023. In its place stood two stages — a Las Vegas show-style platform at the front and a striking circular stage in the middle of the floor. The event burst to life with performers singing about people and technology, while dancers streamed down the aisles and moved between stages, setting a tone of energy and innovation.
The singing and dancing gave way to a live performance as actors took on the roles and personas of UKG customers, replacing the traditional software-based demo to showcase how the company’s products are improving workplace dynamics and outcomes.
Welcome to the new UKG, a company ready to be bold.
The evolution extends far beyond trading staid presentations for theatrical flair. The new energy symbolizes the transformative vision that Morgan and Rachel Barger, president of Go-To-Market (GTM) who joined seven months ago, are infusing into the company.
Morgan’s twin mantras — “we must move faster” and “customers are our north star” — resonated throughout the analyst briefings and translated into concrete strategic initiatives. UKG leaders stressed that the company is “all in” on:
- Putting customers at the center of everything. Morgan and Barger indicated they spent much of their early tenures listening to customers and making whatever adjustments were needed internally to respond better to their needs and their support challenges.
- Driving double-digit growth, by building a global, world-class sales team, amplifying the brand, innovating and investing in people and products.
- Operating as one unified team, with all functions, all regions, all partners, all customers focused on the same goals.
To symbolize the point, Barger, who leads sales and go-to-market strategies, Customer Experience EVP Bob DelPonte and Hugo Sarrazin, President and Chief Product and Technology Officer, stood side by side on stage in the analyst briefing. They talked as one aligned team, stressing the need for the technology, product development, sales and customer support functions to operate seamlessly in lockstep with one another.
This approach is critical for the organization to get to the next level of innovation and growth since Ultimate Software and Kronos merged to form UKG (Ultimate-Kronos Group) in 2020. The company has had a string of successes, including:
- The acquisition of Great Place to Work® (GPTW) in 2021, which enables UKG to leverage data from the feedback from 100 million employees around the world over 30 years to provide unique workforce insights that fuel product development, Agentic AI models, and more.
- The acquisition of Immedis in 2023, a leading global payroll provider, which led to the launch of UKG One View, a multi-country payroll solution that firmly established UKG as a leading player in global payroll.
- Development of UKG Bryte, an AI-powered assistant that uses generative AI to provide important insights that support great workplace experiences.
But mergers, and the innovations that come with them, are complex. Staying connected as an organization and staying connected with customers has been a work in progress that needed a shot of adrenaline. Enter Morgan, who is hyper-focused on customers and communication, emphasizing the need for stronger cohesion and communication to articulate and embed goals and priorities throughout the enterprise.
Morgan, a former Co-CEO of SAP, and other leaders who briefed analysts, emphasized four sources of differentiation for UKG:
Create Great Places to Work Through Technology
UKG plans to more fully leverage its vast quantity and quality of insights from GPTW to create new solutions, particularly focused on vertical industries (e.g., retail, healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality) with large numbers of frontline workers who make up the majority of the workforce but are often underserved. This includes the lofty goal of enabling employees to complete tasks, such as accessing compensation information or requesting leave, in one to two clicks.
Create Actionable Insights Through the World’s Most Differentiated Data
UKG’s data places it in a unique position to help customers better understand their workforce trends, what their employees need and how to meet those needs to drive engagement and retention.
For example, benchmark data on overtime for specific roles can help organizations avoid burnout and ensure they are allocating work fairly by comparing the average overtime logged by their people compared to industry standards. UKG can also deliver industry-specific benchmarks for absenteeism, schedule compliance, turnover, compensation, bonus pay and more.
Making the Complex Simple
The company is heavily focused on making it as easy as possible for employers to keep their workforce ready for the constant change happening around them.
For example, UKG is addressing the tight labor market with the UKG Pro® Talent Marketplace. By early 2025, the internal talent marketplace will help employees find new opportunities to grow their careers and skills. The offering uses propriety workforce management and people data and skills to support personalization and strategic workforce planning. By the fall of 2025, the external talent marketplace will help organizations draw from a qualified pool of external talent that can be leveraged to fill labor gaps when necessary.
UKG is certainly not the first to offer a talent marketplace, but again the data at their disposal provides them with a potential competitive advantage in an ever-expanding category.
On the payroll side of the business, One View Direct, which will be introduced in early 2025, gives UKG multinational customers the ability to synchronize, manage, and perpetually validate payroll calculations from all in-country payroll providers.
For organizations using UKG Ready, the company is adding AI-powered job descriptions and interview questions that streamline the hiring process, as well as other GenAI applications to provide sophistication that is generally unavailable to smaller and mid-market, less complex businesses. UKG is heavily investing here.
On the administrator side, UKG is introducing a new AI-powered Intelligent Control Plane that enables administrators to manage UKG applications without requiring UKG assistance.
The Vertical Advantage
UKG’s depth and breadth in workforce management allow the company to address industry-specific complexities for the frontline workforce, as well as salaried and gig workers. Examples:
- UKG Bryte can help retailers respond rapidly to staffing changes to fill shifts.
- In healthcare, GenAI-enabled self-scheduling can provide nurses with greater flexibility and autonomy.
- Bryte can help frontline managers be more efficient and stay compliant with meal and break policies for hourly workers.
Connected AI Agents
Creating the foundation of the company’s agenda is an AI-first approach to product innovation built on the UKG FleX Platform. Developers are heavily focused on leveraging connected AI agents that can act as digital twins to complete day-to-day tasks for employees, with accuracy and speed. This allows employees more time to better leverage their human skills. You’ll be seeing more and more use of AI agents in the years ahead, and UKG is well-positioned to benefit.
Think of these agents as a team of specialized robots that communicate with each other to handle various HR functions. For example, one AI agent might handle recruitment by screening resumes and scheduling interviews. One agent might manage recruitment activities, another coordinate employee onboarding, while a third oversees training and development. By communicating and coordinating with each other, these AI agents create an intelligent, interconnected system that streamlines workforce management end-to-end.
Looking Ahead
UKG is a provider that seeks to dominate in every market and sector it plays in. From a technology and product perspective, UKG has been thriving for the past couple of years. This new executive team is now adding an aggressive focus on customers and internal alignment and collaboration that could catapult the company forward. 2025 will be a pivotal year for UKG.
