Pros

It's rare to find an organization that is much more than the bottom line. Let's be clear. The bottom line is very important, but success comes from within an organization where you feel valued and heard. UKG is that organization and I only wished I found this company earlier on in my professional career. What do they say?... You must kiss a lot of frogs before you find the right one for you. I'm so happy that I did!

Cons

Navigating through the many channels of the organization to find the answer that you need.

Pros

- Best in class benefits (100% employer-paid healthcare and 45% 401k match) - RSUs awarded as a part of performance - IPO coming in the near future - Has embraced virtual work - Tons of growth potential - sales are strong and we are acquiring the right companies to increase our global presence

Cons

How to approach this review? To start, context is key: UKG, or Ultimate Kronos Group, is a merger of two mid-sized, successful HR software companies: Kronos, mainly focused on timekeeping, and Ultimate Software, mainly focused on payroll. Both were well-respected, growing companies with extremely complimentary products but very, very few overlapping customers. The merging of the two companies was an incredibly smart business decision that tapped into a huge amount of potential growth. Truly a match made in heaven! Culturally, however, the merger was one of the worst fits you could imagine. I am a legacy Ultimate employee, and I admit my bias. I started with Ultimate fairly young and experienced tremendous personal and career growth during my tenure there. However, the reason for my bias was a once in a lifetime work experience at what now, sadly, seems to be a once in a lifetime company. Ultimate ranked as the #2 best company to work for in the United States on the Great Places to Work list the year before the merger. This reflected a work environment that went beyond just great perks and benefits. We are talking about a company (and a leadership team) that treated employees with respect, embracing their whole selves and promoting authenticity and diversity at the highest levels. There was a focus on working smarter not harder, embracing innovation, and constantly looking to improve things not just for our customers but for our employees as well. The tagline, "People first," applied from the lowest paid employee to the most profitable customer, and, I would argue, the lowest paid employee always got priority because it was the right thing to do. Ultimate never had a layoff and committed, publicly, to never having one. Ultimate paid for 100% of healthcare for its employees and their families from the day it was founded. Ultimate increased its 401k match over time, even when it was already wildly above industry standards. Ultimate paid for funeral expenses for every employee who passed away. And at the end of the day, Ultimate valued its employees and treated them with respect - we were, if not a family, at least a group of people who were deeply dedicated to helping each other and thriving together. I had the most fulfilling work experience of my life at Ultimate. I felt trusted, valued, and cared for. I woke up excited for work most days. I made lifelong friends and worked with some of the most passionate, intelligent people I have ever met. We were united around doing something amazing together, which led to a culture that truly, honestly, was excellent. That is not the case anymore. One only has to look at the composition of our executive levels to see the beginning of the end. They are ALL Kronos executives. Where once there was diversity of thought AND diversity of ethnicity and gender, we now have little to none of either. What's it like to work at UKG? Go back in time 20-30 years. Put authoritarian boomers in charge of everything. Employees are now numbers, data points on a spreadsheet that don't matter except in how they can provide more value at less cost. Watch as leadership chooses to run their new, larger, and incredibly more complex company in exactly the same way that they ran their mid-sized timekeeping company for the last 20 years. Watch that fail. Try to teach, share, and collaborate and instead deal with politics, power grabs, and black and white thinking. Watch as the failure to learn, to adapt, to even acknowledge another way of doing things causes an erosion in both the quality of the product and the quality of the service provided to customers. Watch as top talent drains away at a trickle and then a rush (or is aggressively driven out because they dared to push back against the status quo). Watch those jobs become outsourced to India, then rinse and repeat. Is UKG a generally bad place to work? Even after writing everything above... Not really, if I'm honest. There is real opportunity for growth over the next few years as well as the promise of stability that a company of this size typically offers. The amazing Ultimate benefits were kept (for now). Some parts of the org are more functional and have done better at adapting than others. I am not personally unhappy in my job as it stands, which I hope brings some context to the above word vomit - I am not a disgruntled ex-employee, but someone who has watched this process from beginning to end and still somehow has hope, even though it's small, for a better future. I truly want things to be better; I just don't see that happening anytime soon. Overall, UKG is an okay place to work. Nothing shocking when it comes to corporate America I suppose, and I've certainly worked at worse places than this. But the fact that we are just "okay" makes me sad knowing what was lost. The potential for excellence was there, but if you are looking for the excitement, engagement, and innovation that come with a best-in-class work culture, I'd look elsewhere for now.