Summary

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Properties

  • Meeting Date: Unknown
  • Meeting Type: Other
  • Note Type: Summary
  • Attendees: Barbara Bement, Jess Foury, Steve Wade, Hebron Girma, Kate Loughery, Lisa Law, Scott Warner

1. Meeting Summary

I attended a detailed UKG platform demo focused primarily on time and labor, reporting, recruiting, onboarding, LMS, performance, compensation, and payroll capabilities. Overall, the system appears to align well with what we are looking for, especially the ability to consolidate functions into one platform, improve task-level labor tracking, support employee communications through mobile/SMS, and reduce manual workarounds that are currently happening in spreadsheets and disconnected systems.

The time and labor functionality was particularly relevant for operations. Steve confirmed the solution looks like a meaningful improvement, especially for tracking labor by task rather than relying on manual Excel-based processes. The team also validated that the system can support time-off controls, reporting by date range, and administrator-driven employee messaging, which would be useful for weather alerts, open enrollment reminders, and other broad workforce communications.

We also spent time on recruiting, onboarding, document management, learning, reporting, compensation, and payroll. Lisa focused on ATS, internal/external postings, LMS content creation, and possible compensation benchmarking savings. Kate went deep on payroll edge cases, including terminated employees receiving salary continuation and bonus payments after separation, variance reporting, shortfall alerts, and cross-company approval needs involving Canada and unpaid approvers. I asked a few questions to clarify LinkedIn boosting, custom reporting, whether Bright AI is included in the base package, support model after go-live, and how unpaid or nontraditional approvers would work. My overall takeaway is that UKG appears scalable and capable, but we need to ensure implementation is done correctly, especially given the complexity of Canada, multi-company structures, and payroll edge cases.

From a next-steps standpoint, Lisa indicated that internally we plan to meet, compare likes and dislikes, and work through a decision quickly - ideally next week, but no later than the end of the month. I reinforced that, based on our past conversion experience, we need to do this right rather than rush it.

2. Attendee List

  • Barbara Bement
  • Jess Foury
  • Steve Wade
  • Hebron Girma
  • Kate Loughery
  • Lisa Law
  • Scott Warner

3. Action Items

  • [Lisa Law] Gather internal feedback from the team on platform likes, dislikes, and overall fit.
  • [Lisa Law and Scott Warner] Align on recommendation and decision path for whether to proceed.
  • [Internal team] Review UKG capabilities against key requirements, especially time and labor, payroll exceptions, recruiting, reporting, and Canada support.
  • [Kate Loughery] Further validate payroll-specific edge cases, including terminated employee imports, severance/salary continuation processing, off-cycle bonus payments, net shortfall handling, and variance reporting.
  • [Barbara Bement / payroll team] Validate payroll approval workflow needs, including cash requirement approval routing.
  • [HR/Recruiting team] Confirm requirements for internal job board configuration, LinkedIn posting workflow, onboarding forms ownership, and LMS content upload needs.
  • [UKG / Jess Foury team] Follow up as needed on unanswered configuration details, particularly around Canada, cross-company approvals, unpaid approver access, and implementation planning.
  • [Scott Warner] Participate in final internal review and decision-making on vendor selection and implementation timing.

4. Relevant Timelines

  • Decision target: Ideally next week, and no later than the end of the month.
  • Desired go-live timing: Referenced as important, but the team acknowledged UKG's guidance that the implementation timeline may need to extend in order to do the setup thoroughly and correctly.
  • Jess Foury availability: On vacation next week, but still reachable by phone if needed.
  • Annual bonus payout timing discussed: April off-cycle payments for prior-year eligible employees, including certain terminated employees.
  • Salary continuation timing discussed: Terminated employees from October and December reductions in force may continue receiving severance-related payments throughout the year.

5. Additional Notes

  • The strongest overall theme was consolidation. The team responded well to the idea of moving toward a single system across HR, payroll, recruiting, onboarding, reporting, and employee self-service.
  • The mobile experience and SMS communication capability stood out as practical advantages for reaching employees who do not regularly check email.
  • Time and labor functionality appears to be a meaningful operational improvement, especially for task tracking and visibility into who is off and when.
  • Reporting was a major positive. UKG represented that there are many prebuilt reports, self-service report building is available, and report creation does not require additional custom-report fees in most cases.
  • Bright AI drew interest as a built-in support layer for employees and administrators. I specifically asked whether it was part of the base package, and that appears to be the case.
  • Recruiting and onboarding capabilities looked flexible, including customizable dashboards, configurable checklists, document management, and support for internal and external postings.
  • LMS capability appears to support loading our own recorded content, which could help with internal training administration.
  • Compensation tools may represent a future cost-savings opportunity if the data is robust enough to reduce dependence on external market benchmarking providers.
  • Payroll complexity remains one of the most important diligence items. Kate surfaced several real-world scenarios that need to work cleanly in the system, particularly around terminated employees, off-cycle payments, approval workflows, and multi-entity/cross-border structures.
  • Canada support is a critical implementation consideration. UKG expressed confidence, but this remains an area to verify carefully during diligence and planning.
  • The support model post-sale was important to clarify. I asked directly whether Jess disappears after the sale, and she indicated she remains involved as the account manager, while implementation and support teams handle execution and case management.
  • My overall impression is positive. The platform appears capable and scalable, but if we proceed, we need disciplined implementation planning, clean data migration, and careful attention to our organizational complexity rather than forcing an aggressive conversion timeline.