Employ
RecruitUKG Review
UKG Review Summary
Score 8 out of 10
Currency
100+
Monthly fees
Available by request
Payment options
SWIFT/ACH
UKG, formed in 2020 from the merger of Ultimate Software and Kronos Incorporated, is a leading cloud computing firm specializing in HR administration, payroll processing, and workforce management.
The company offers a variety of services, including time and attendance monitoring and global payroll, but requires clients to contact sales for pricing details.
UKG Company Overview
UKG is a new name for a company with a long history in the HR and payroll space. It stands for Ultimate Kronos Group and came to life after a merger of two companies. Ultimate Software was a software company founded in Florida in 1990 that sold human capital management (HCM) software. Kronos Incorporated was a workforce management and human capital management cloud computing company founded in 1977 and headquartered in Massachusetts. These two companies joined forces to create UKG, a service provider valued at $22 billion.
UKG calls itself an HR, payroll, and workforce management solution. While its main focus lies in HR administration and payroll processing, it also provides many related services like time and attendance monitoring, absence management, compliance, talent management, and employee experience management.
UKG currently offers two main service packages and a host of additional add-on services. It also offers a global payroll service. However, like many competitors, it chooses not to disclose its prices online, instead asking clients to contact sales for quotes. In this review, we’ll look at all of the services this provider offers and highlight the areas where it excels to help you decide if this is the right partner for your business.
UKG Key Features
1. UKG Human Capital Management
UKG calls its platform a human capital management (HCM) solution, which means it’s an effective tool for managing your workforce. This kind of system used to centralize admin is also frequently referred to as a human resources management system (HRMS) or a human resources information system (HRIS). The goal of such platforms is to improve the employee experience and maximize the value of your team, which is, of course, one of the most valuable resources your business has. UKG’s cloud-based platform includes advanced functionality that helps transform HR functions into opportunities to increase employee engagement and productivity. These functions include recruitment, training, payroll, compensation, and performance management.
Businesses have two service options when they use UKG’s platform. First, there’s UKG Ready, the provider’s package aimed at small and medium businesses (SMBs). Its features include HR admin tools, payroll, time and attendance, talent management, scheduling, compliance, and basic analytics tools.
UKG also offers a more advanced package for large enterprises called UKG Pro. This package is subscription-based, like Ready, and includes more and more powerful features like HR admin, payroll, time and attendance, talent management, scheduling, compliance, workforce management, reporting and analytics, and collaboration tools.
Unfortunately, UKG’s prices aren’t shared publicly. Be that as it may, we’ve uncovered prices from user reviews and reports for these packages. Users suggest that they’ve paid around $10/employee per month for UKG Ready and between $26 and $37/employee per month for UKG Pro.
Let’s drill down a bit deeper into some of the functions found in these service packages.
Time & Attendance: UKG provides time & attendance tools to help you track when your team is working. It has mobile apps (for Pro and Ready) that help employees clock in and clock out and also track leaves and other absences. All of the data collected from these tools is integrated into payroll so employees’ salaries are calculated automatically.
Talent Management: UKG’s talent management features combine to help you get the most out of your team. You get help with recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and, eventually, offboarding. You can also use the platform’s analytics to focus on flight risks and improve retention.
Performance Management: Performance management features let you track evaluations over time and look for issues or employees that need rewards for great work. There’s also succession planning which helps to track top performers and prepare them to move up through your organization.
Learning & Development: UKG lets you develop and present L&D programs to your employees. You can create branded content that employees can access anywhere, anytime, to improve their skills and understanding.
Employee Experience: With this HCM platform, you can also manage employee experience. UKG allows you to improve communication and collaboration as well as employee self-service to help build a quality workplace. It can also let you create surveys and collect data on how your employees are doing to help prevent burnout and turnover.
2. UKG Payroll
As we’ve already mentioned, UKG’s service packages include time and attendance tracking. This is an essential part of payroll processing, and having it built-in, the platform helps payroll specialists save a lot of time. In fact, everything about UKG’s payroll function saves time, from automatic calculations to automated timecard approvals and absence management.
UKG lets companies quickly and easily calculate wages, subtract tax withholdings, and figure out other deductions for benefits and garnishments if necessary. Once payroll is all calculated, your payroll specialist can review and approve it, and then it’s run quickly and efficiently. To fund this process, you can work from invoices or even set up reverse wires that all UKG to withdraw funds from your bank account. Employees are then paid from these funds through direct deposits directly from a UKG bank account to avoid payment reconciliation issues.
When a payroll run is finished, the work’s not yet done. UKG continues to act on your behalf by sending tax payments and contributions to benefits programs regularly. Employee W-2 forms and 940 or 941 forms for your business get sent to the IRS and reporting to state government bodies is also performed on your behalf.
UKG has recently unveiled a new service called UKG One View that allows employers to manage workers and run payroll across the globe. Organizations working internationally with entities set up in different jurisdictions can use this service package to move money across borders and ensure compliance in 160 countries. You can fund international employees and contractors in over 120 currencies and work in over 20 languages.
Finally, UKG offers an app called UKG Wallet which employees can load to their mobile devices. This app helps them manage their payments and personal finances and also gain earned wage access to help reduce stress and let employees use their own money when they need it.
3. UKG Compliance
Like many competitors, UKG gives employees a lot of access to benefits package choices so they can keep informed and make great decisions for themselves. Enrollment is centralized within the benefits section of the platform. This makes it easy to see and select beneficiaries, enroll during open enrollment periods, input life events, add supporting documents, and ensure compliance with all federal and state laws related to benefits.
4. UKG Recruitment
Many HR services providers avoid recruitment because of the specialized skills needed to perform this function effectively. UKG is not a recruitment company and does not offer any active recruitment services. It does, however, provide clients with software-based solutions that can help them streamline their own recruitment processes. You can use the UKG platform to create job descriptions and get them translated into multiple languages. It also integrates with LinkedIn, letting you effortlessly post job openings on that well-known platform. However, you can also create your own internal and external job boards and create links to these for even more exposure.
UKG includes what is essentially an applicant tracking system, or ATS, which helps you to handle incoming applications, get to know applicants and schedule communications with them. When it’s time to choose interviewees, you can use UKG to help set up your interview questions, send invitations to interviews, and even send out offer letters.
You can even try out the Candidate Match predictor, a tool that generates a list of applicants recommended for your specific opportunities. All of these tools can help any business save time and resources in their searches for the talent they require.
5. UKG Platform
We’ve been looking at the different functions that the UKG platform supports, but we haven’t yet explored the platform itself. The merger of Ultimate Software and Kronos Incorporated, two large cloud providers, turned UKG into one of the largest cloud-based services in the world.
Its platform, accessed through its Pro and Ready packages, is highly intuitive and easy to use. It can be challenging to set up both products due to their complexity, especially UKG Pro, which has a lot more functionality.
- UKG offers out-of-the-box integrations with lots of useful software apps like Windows, Netsuite, Equifax, Salesforce, Jobvite, and Quickbooks. You can also design and build integrations for your current software using UKG’s Boomi-powered Pro Integration Hub.
- Offers mobile apps for each of its service packages, Ready and Pro. These apps for both Android and iOS devices allow employees to access their accounts on the platform conveniently to view their benefits, request time off, and log their hours. Admins can quickly approve requests, monitor data, and even answer questions. There’s also the UKG Wallet app that lets employee access their earned wages.
- The UKG platform is compliant with SOC 2 controls and ISO 27001, 27017, and 27018 certified. These standards demonstrate to clients that Paylocity is serious about protecting their data security and privacy. At the same time, it’s important to note that despite these commitments to security, UKG was targeted by a ransomware attack in late 2021 that affected many of its enterprise clients.
UKG Reviews
The average scores (as of the time of writing) were:
- UKG Pro Capterra = 4.2/5 (622 reviews)
- UKG Pro G2 = 4.2/5 (1504 reviews)
- UKG Trustpilot = 2.6/5 (4 reviews)
- UKG Glassdoor = 3.4/5 (6.8k+ reviews)
UKG Pricing
| Plan | Price per employee/contractor per month |
|---|---|
| UKG Ready | Custom pricing |
| UKG Pro | Custom pricing |
UKG Pros and Cons
- Pros
Useful integrations
UKG integrates out of the box with dozens of apps but also provides a solution for making custom integrations for businesses’ existing tech stacks.
Comprehensive solution
UKG’s platform has solutions for almost every HR function. It covers recruitment support, benefits administration, payroll, training, and much more. The functionality it offers can make this platform a standalone HRIS or HRMS, at least for smaller businesses.
Global payroll
Many other providers only offer solutions for businesses contained in the US. However, UKG offers a global payroll solution that features compliance assistance in over 160 countries and payments in more than 120 currencies.
- Cons
Fees not posted online
Many competitors choose to post their prices online, but UKG does not. This can make it difficult and time-consuming for potential clients to compare this provider with others. While we’ve seen suggestions of prices from $10-$37/employee per month, the only way to get reliable information is by requesting a specific quote.
No active recruitment
UKG’s platform includes multiple features to help businesses with their recruiting needs, such as integrations to leading job sites and an ATS to manage applicants. However, it doesn’t provide any direct recruiting services or job pools to help businesses struggling with their own recruiting.
No consulting
Many competitors focus on high-touch service, providing SMBs with consultations with HR, payroll, and even business experts. UKG simply provides a comprehensive platform but no specific human support for managing HR.
UKG Unique Selling Point
UKG’s unique selling point is the provider’s comprehensive range of HR tools that focus not only on payroll and benefits management but all aspects of managing a team. These include people analytics, employee experience management, and talent management, features that a lot of UKG’s competitors lack.
RemotePeople Score for UKG
8.0/10
Our expert score for UKG
Our team came to this score by considering the following components in the following weightings:
Payroll features
25%
Talent management features
10%
HR features
10%
Compliance features
10%
Platform features
10%
Pricing
20%
User reviews
15%
For each component, UKG received the following score:
Payroll features
20/25
Talent management features
8/10
HR features
9/10
Compliance features
7/10
Platform features
7/10
Pricing
15/20
User reviews
14/15
UKG — Our Take
UKG is a good choice for SMBs looking to centralize all HR functions in a single platform. Its Ready plan is more appropriate for lean organizations running on small or non-existent HR departments. The Pro version is better suited for larger enterprises that want to save time and money by automating many of their HR functions while delivering improved and more accurate services.
Hire Anywhere.
We Handle the Rest.
- 150+ countries, fully compliant
- EOR from $199/, no hidden fees
- In-house recruiters included
- Real humans, not chatbots
- Rated 5/5 by 3,000+ companies
Switching from another EOR?
Get one year free.