UKG Helps Two-Thirds of NRF Top 100 Retailers Create Great Workplaces

AI-powered HCM suite built with the world’s largest collection of people, work, and culture data transforms the employee experience.

LOWELL, Mass. & WESTON, Fla. UKG, a leading provider of HR, payroll, workforce management, and culture solutions for all people, is showcasing its AI-powered HCM suite at this week’s NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show conference and expo. Two-thirds of the Top 100 National Retail Federation (NRF) brands, along with thousands of other retail businesses worldwide, trust UKG to transform the frontline employee experience, creating great workplaces based on a deep understanding of people, culture, and operational efficiency to drive better business outcomes.

“UKG ensures our associates are in the right place at the right time to serve customers, while also giving them the best work-life balance possible,” said Jim Abbatemarco, vice president of retail operations at The Vitamin Shoppe, which leverages UKG Pro Workforce Management. “Our people are empowered to pick up the shifts that work best for them, which has saved our store and district managers a tremendous amount of time. As a result, our leaders and associates can focus on what’s most important: interacting with customers, driving sales, and delivering an outstanding experience to everyone who walks through our doors.”

With the introduction of UKG Bryte — a generative AI sidekick suite built with the world’s largest collection of people, work, and culture data to support great experiences — UKG helps retailers shine a light on important insights and hidden trends otherwise lost in vast quantities of data. With nearly a decade of AI leadership, along with 2,500 UKG AI models currently in production, Bryte provides quick, practical advice to address workplace challenges, proactively identifies opportunities for frontline employees to learn more skills, and helps everyone more effectively pursue performance goals, among many other benefits.

The UKG Great Place To Work^® Hub utilizes Bryte to guide HR teams and people managers along their journey to becoming more effective people leaders. The industry-first offering transforms HR metrics into opportunities to enhance belonging, equity, and inclusion, directly connecting culture initiatives to business outcomes. It prompts leaders with AI-powered recommendations and nudges designed to help reduce turnover, mitigate burnout, and create more engaging experiences, based on decades of Great Place To Work® surveys and benchmarks.

“UKG has simplified life for our frontline staff. It’s our source of truth for all workforce and HR information and is a one-stop shop for our employees as everything lives in one place,” said Jessica Foster, senior HR operations manager at Leslie’s, which utilizes the UKG Pro suite. “For my team, HR is our main focus, but for leaders and associates, HR is just one part of their day. We need them to be focused on our customers. So, when they interact with UKG, we want that experience to be as easy and intuitive as possible. Simplicity is essential for our managers and leaders so they can spend less time in the system and more time developing associates and discussing performance.”

A global leader in retail workforce management technology and best practices, UKG’s extensive AI expertise creates the foundation for optimized operations and great frontline employee experiences.

• Advanced scheduling combines employee preferences, skills, and store needs to create best-fit schedules that work for associates and the business.
• AI-powered shift swapping and time-off requests provide real-time approvals, maximizing frontline flexibility while ensuring shifts are staffed by individuals with the right skills and qualifications.
• Patented machine learning algorithms elevate forecasting by self-tuning based on individual customer trends and data to better plan labor budgets while ensuring people do not feel under-staffed or over-staffed while at work.
• Task management helps employees know what to do and when to do it, creating clear priorities while providing agility to respond to always evolving store needs, driving higher customer and shopper satisfaction.
• UKG Strategic Workforce Planning lets retailers plan quarters — and even years — into the future, allowing retailers to identify opportunities for skills development and career progression among their existing teams, while being more intentional in their hiring and labor budgeting projections.

U.K.-based Costa Coffee, one of the world’s largest and best-known coffee shop chains, increased staffing efficiency by nearly 50% during the holiday season, and 65% immediately thereafter, with Strategic Workforce Planning.

“The results we’ve experienced with UKG are tremendous,” said Katie Little, labor operations manager at Costa Coffee. “Store managers can accurately plan their staffing needs well in advance and make data-driven decisions, so our stores always have the right people with the right skills in the right place. This not only helps keep customers happy but ensures we have the ideal mix of employees, which creates a better experience for them, all while keeping us on budget.”

Launching UKG One View expands payroll to 160 countries globally, providing a single punch-to-pay process that can be deployed for global retailers in as little as five weeks. This ensures accuracy, consistency, and the same experience for all people, regardless of geography — another hallmark for great workplaces. UKG solutions scale to meet the needs of businesses, providing a wide array of analytics and configurable reports, as well as easier access to critical workforce management and human capital management data.

“As our business expands, we need to be able to scale our global cloud platforms. UKG is able to do that and is part of our overall IT strategy,” said Doug Goehl, vice president of customer technologies Crocs, Inc. “Historically, most of our regions operated independently of one another in the sense that they relied on manual processes or homegrown solutions for their workforce management needs. It was difficult to view data across networks and understand where our efficiencies were, and it became clear we needed a global platform to best support our business and our people. That’s where UKG Pro WFM came in.”

With a mission to provide every organization with the opportunity to become a great place to work, the UKG Pro suite delivers people-centric approaches to talent acquisition and onboarding, performance management, and HR service delivery, which are complemented by culture-building tools, such as:

• UKG Talk: an employee-communications platform that keeps frontline workforces connected to each other, employee resource groups, and the company mission;
• UKG Employee Voice: an AI-powered employee sentiment tool that encourages transparent and conversational ongoing feedback so leaders can understand how their people really feel; and
• UKG Wallet: a financial wellness suite that gives associates, and especially those living in unbanked or underbanked areas, access to their earned wages prior to payday.

With an ability to serve organizations from 20 to 2 million employees, UKG was recently named a Leader in both the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Suites and The Forrester Wave™: Human Capital Management Q2 2023 reports.

“I’ve never experienced an HCM solution with as much engagement power as UKG,” said Tina Barte, vice president of HR for Heartland Motor Company. “UKG has generated amazing outcomes for our people with technology that allows us to meet them where they are by soliciting feedback — and then taking action on that feedback — to elevate our culture and build trust as well as a deepened sense of belonging.”

About UKG

At UKG, our purpose is people. We are on a mission to inspire every organization to become a great place to work through HCM technology built for all. More than 80,000 customers across all sizes, industries, and geographies trust UKG HR, payroll, workforce management, and culture cloud solutions to drive great workplace experiences and make better, more confident people and business decisions. With the world’s largest collection of people data, work data, and culture data combined with rich experience using artificial intelligence in the service of people, we connect culture insights with business outcomes to show what’s possible when organizations invest in their people. To learn more, visit ukg.com.

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