UKG Announces Innovation Award Winners at UKG Works Conference

UKG, a leading global provider of human capital management (HCM), payroll, HR service delivery, and workforce management solutions, announced the winners of the 2021 UKG Works Innovation Awards, which recognize customers leveraging people-centric UKG technology in unique ways to solve complex business challenges, add value to their organizations, and create meaningful and connected experiences for their employees.

“Our award winners demonstrate a deep commitment to their people as well as their own customers, citizens, and patients”

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“Our award winners demonstrate a deep commitment to their people as well as their own customers, citizens, and patients,” said Bob Hughes, chief customer officer at UKG. “Through their innovative use of UKG technology, these organizations are driving exceptional business results and going above and beyond to create empowering workplaces for their people — two critically important components in the ever-changing world of work.”

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This year’s UKG Works Innovation Award winners include:

• Baptist Community Services (BCS), a nonprofit continuing-care retirement community and UKG customer for more than 20 years. Since migrating to UKG Dimensions, BCS has experienced a significant increase in employee engagement as staff can access schedules, pay statements, direct deposit information, and accrued time off via the UKG mobile app. BCS also successfully completed its first employee engagement survey in four years with UKG Pro Employee Voice to drive further engagement.
• BJ’s Wholesale Club, one of the largest warehouse club operators in the United States. With Dimensions, BJ’s can more accurately forecast labor as well as schedule employees more efficiently and effectively. During the pandemic, BJ’s added special pay rules and premiums in Dimensions to retain workers and keep stores adequately staffed and designed a button for its timeclocks to ensure sanitation laps are completed at specific intervals, multiple times a day, to help protect customers and employees.
• Children’s Hospital Colorado, one of the top children’s hospitals in the United States. At the start of the pandemic, with help from its UKG solution, Children’s Hospital Colorado established a scheduling and staffing command center virtually overnight, where a team scheduled and unscheduled thousands of employees into new COVID-19 response roles. The hospital additionally scheduled a pool of flexible resources that could shift to new needs at a moment’s notice through the UKG mobile app.
• City and County of Denver, the capital city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Leveraging the UKG mobile app, many employees were able to work remotely during the pandemic, allowing the city to know where employees were working for safety and contact-tracing purposes. Employees could also add comments regarding specific tasks performed — including whether they were working at emergency operations or COVID-19 testing centers. This data helped Denver receive $60.4 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds to assist with its pandemic response and emergency shelters.
• City of Oklahoma City (OKC), the capital city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. A UKG customer since 2003, OKC recently migrated to Dimensions and has reduced the time spent processing payroll by four hours each week for every one of the city’s 150 payroll officers — a total time savings of 600 hours per week. Dimensions has also enabled a new and empowering way of working, as managers and employees can work remotely — when needed, with ease — and remain connected at all times.
• Clif Bar & Company, a maker of energy foods and drinks. A UKG Pro customer since 2014, Clif Bar implemented Dimensions for a full-suite experience and did so entirely remotely — as well as on time and under budget — in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost immediately, the number of employee time-off requests submitted via paper was nearly eliminated, as employees could access Dimensions from anywhere. Recently, Clif Bar showed a return on investment by reporting an 11% decline in overtime per employee, per week, over a 12-month period.
• Colorvision International, a digital-imaging organization that partners with hospitality groups and theme parks to create photo souvenirs for guests at more than 100 locations globally. Since going live on UKG Ready, Colorvision has reduced the time spent sorting, filing, and managing paperwork by 95%. This has allowed managers to focus more time on cultivating an exceptional guest experience by attracting and retaining top talent. Employees are also more engaged as they can complete onboarding activities, access W-2s, submit time-off requests, and view their schedules from anywhere.
• Intermountain Healthcare, a large healthcare provider in the U.S. Intermountain West. At the start of the pandemic, Intermountain leveraged its UKG solution to manage thousands of shifts and redeploy employees to fill positions such as door greeters, health screeners, curbside testers, and caregiver safety officers to handle a surge in patients. With its UKG solution, the healthcare provider had 100% system-wide visibility into staffing coverage and experienced a 97% shift-fill rate through its “Willing to Work” functionality, available via the UKG mobile app.
• Marriott International, one of the most recognizable names in the global hospitality industry. With its custom UKG solution, Marriott standardized timekeeping practices and manages labor across more than 600 hotels in the U.S. Using benchmarking to provide hotels with best-in-class productivity targets, UKG helped hotel leaders save $254 million in wage expenses in just one year. Additionally, over the last eight months, reporting capabilities have helped Marriott improve schedule usage across its properties by 11%.

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“Our decades-long partnership with UKG has transformed the way we access, analyze, and manage data, helping to create a new culture of workforce management at all levels of our organization,” said Brian Shoettes, vice president of operations planning and scheduling at Marriott. “With UKG, we have confidence in the consistency of our platform and the integrity of our data, which allows hotel leaders to spend more time focusing on our mission of putting people first and continuing to be a great place to work.”

“Our customers continue to astound us with their ingenuity and innovative spirit,” said Chris Todd, president at UKG. “At the heart of great organizations are great people doing transformative work to keep their employees inspired and empowered, which is why we are continuously investing in our customer experience to help organizations achieve the best possible outcomes. We are proud of the lifelong partnerships we have formed with so many organizations worldwide and are deeply committed to continuing to innovate with them.”

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