2021 Innovation Award Winners

Schlegel Villages manages 19 long-term care and retirement villages across Ontario, Canada. COVID outbreaks at multiple locations early in the pandemic created many challenges. The company had more than 100 caregivers quit in a single day at one location. In the first week of April 2020, Ontario’s Ministry of Health put in place restrictions which created additional strains on staffing. Thanks to UKG Pro Recruiting and UKG Onboarding, the company was able to seamlessly transition from a decentralized recruiting model to a rapidly-formed central team. Recruiting functionality enabled the company to process hundreds of candidates per week, and Onboarding facilitated entirely virtual, high volume, high speed processing of new hires.

This local government body used UKG Employee Voice and workflows in UKG Pro to revolutionize the way the organization reports on and gathers data from employees exiting the organization. Workflows initiated by managers help ensure timely distribution of surveys to exiting employees, and the data gathered through UKG Employee Voice show trends immediately. Heatmaps identify themes based on age, department, supervisor, and tenure. The cost effectiveness of UKG Employee Voice surveys also enable the organization to survey all employees, including hourly and seasonal. The organization is able to capture and report on motivations for leaving, challenges faced, and opportunities for improvement. As a result, the company has made data-driven decisions around benefit offerings and supervisor training.

First PREMIER Bank and Bankcard was honored for using UKG Pro to overcome a significant business challenge, strengthening operations and the employee experience as a result. The company selected UKG Pro Learning to replace the limited capabilities of its prior learning management system. With Learning, the company is able to save administration time and improve the employee experience with the automatic assignment of new hire curricula and regulatory modules to specific employees. The company is taking advantage of the solution’s flexibility by providing employees with a combination of live training, custom course design, and the option for virtual training. First PREMIER Bank and Bankcard is also able to seamlessly report on completed training, policy acceptance, and course surveys.

2nd.MD provides virtual medical consultations. The company developed HR resources in UKG Pro People Assist that enable employees to use and access any and all HR-related documents, including position requisition requests, offer requests, and tuition reimbursement. Setting up these forms along with workflow notifications saved the company 1 FTE that was budgeted for HR administration. In addition, through a combination of UKG Pro Recruiting, UKG Pro Onboarding, and UKG Pro People Assist, the company responded to a 64% increase in hiring demand in 2020 with a 52% decrease in time to identify hired candidate, 28% decrease in time to hire, and savings of $232,892 in outsourced HR costs.

Cofense develops computer security software. With talent management and salary planning from UKG, the company has been able to streamline into one HCM solution a process that had required three software programs, saving more than $110,000 annually during the past four years; and more than $50,000 on employee hours that had supported manual processes and multiple systems during that time. As a result, the company achieved total ROI in four years of approximately $500,000.

Vertex Aerospace achieved a cost savings of $7.25 million over the last three years. The company’s savings was due to $5.5 million in direct system costs by consolidating separate solutions into Pro, $1.5 million in payroll and labor cost reductions associated with efficiencies from UKG Pro, and $250,000 in vendor and labor cost reductions due to Pro’s ability to automate calculations of the government-required Health & Welfare supplement, and union pension requirements.

Biltmore is a 125-year-old historic estate and tourist destination. A UKG Pro user for more than a decade, the company migrated in November 2020 from Workforce Central to Dimensions. The company’s unified Pro/Dimension solution is delivering several benefits. Biltmore has reduced payroll processing time by several hours each week, managers no longer have to calculate employee overtime manually, and detailed reporting is ensuring accurate pay while giving managers visibility into time and costs.

FLEXcon was recognized for using UKG’s powerful solutions to achieve a variety of business enhancements. A Pro user since 2005, FLEXcon migrated from Workforce Central to UKG Dimensions in May 2021. The UKG platform has generated significant business improvements for the company, including a faster payroll process due to quick links between the two solutions, and seamless electronic movement of data from Dimensions into the Pro Payroll Gateway. FLEXcon now also has the ability to run payroll for all pay groups at once, and the opportunity to engage in better workforce planning with reporting on very granular cost data.

Mosaic is a timber management company that owns 800,000 acres in western Canada. A UKG Pro user since 2018, the company launched UKG Ready in 2020. The integration between Pro and Ready helped the company transition from a paper-based time entry and approval system to an automated platform, which saved approximately 60 hours a month in HR admin time. In addition, the company’s unionized labor force requires the calculation of more than 200 rules within one pay group. The UKG product suite was one of the only platforms that could support multiple job rates and the complexity of the company’s shift premium rates. Within the UKG product suite, employee information flows seamlessly, and the company has achieved enhanced data accuracy and consistency across pay calculations, with audit trails and reports available. The data, once processed in UKG Ready, also effortlessly integrates with Pro’s payroll gateway for payroll processing.