Camille is an HR director at a nonprofit organization (YMCA) and oversees several locations in her area. Last month, many of her seasonal employees returned to school. With several job recs open and performance season on its way, Camille has a ton of manual processes she needs to take care of. Now, thanks to the enhancements in release 71, she can automate most of her to-do list. Not only does this save her time, it also helps her organization begin to go paperless, a goal they’ve been trying to attain. Follow along and see how Camille navigates through each enhancement.
1. eSignature
Filling empty positions is at the top of Camille’s to-do list. She has several people well into the hiring process, but trying to get the proper forms signed in a timely manner has been tough. Forms like the I-9 require an actual written signature, slowing down the process. Thanks to the latest eSignature enhancement, candidates can e-sign forms like these. All Camille has to do is select the I-9 checkbox in the Wet Signature section of her signature settings widget and she’s all set. No more printing and mailing out forms to be signed and waiting to get them back!
Where it is: Cross Product
Who will use it: HR administrators
2. Multiple uploads allowed across platform
As mentioned before, Camille’s organization is beginning to go paperless, which is great, except now she needs to upload all the papers within employees’ personnel files. Previously, she had to upload all files one at a time, which was extremely time-consuming. Thanks to Release 71, Camille can now upload up to five files at the same time. This drastically reduces the time it takes to create an electronic employee file and makes the thought of going paperless less daunting to Camille and the rest of her organization.
Where it is: Cross Product
Who will use it: HR and Payroll
3. Communicator
Communicator is one of Camille’s favorite enhancements. Many of her employees don’t log in to UKG Ready unless they are at work, and if she has an important message to send to staff, using the Pop-Up Communicator doesn’t always work. By using Communicator, Camille can send important messages to her employees outside the UKG Ready system. Depending on what notification preferences her employees have signed up for, she can send messages out through email, SMS,* mailbox, push notifications, and even compatible smartwatches. Now, whether it be a reminder to approve their timecard or informing them of a change in the organization’s hours, Camille can easily communicate any type of message with her employees.
* In order to send communications via SMS, organizations must be using our marketplace vendor Twilio.
Where it is: Cross Product
Who will use it: HR
4. Role profile opt-in for readyConnect personal experience panel
The readyConnect panel was Camille’s favorite enhancement from the last release, and now it just got even better. Camille can now opt in to her own role profile instead of using a preconfigured one. The content in the readyConnect panel is now curated specifically for her role as an HR director and not just based on how her organization uses UKG Ready. This content will really help her out as her company begins open enrollment. The readyConnect panel will now also provide information on trainings and webinars UKG is hosting, which she can attend, as well as specific resources she can use day to day.
Where it is: Cross Product
Who will use it: HR
5. Primary Timesheet
In addition to Camille overseeing several YMCA locations in her area, she also has several employees who work in different locations with separate tax ID numbers. The Primary Timesheet enhancement makes viewing time punches and total time worked across these different locations easy. Camille used to have to look at multiple timesheets across several locations to see who took time off when and how many hours total an employee had already worked that week. With the Primary Timesheet, all that information is condensed into one timesheet. Her employees who work at different locations can see all their time punches and request time off all from the Primary Timesheet.
Where it is: TLM
Who will use it: Employees and managers
6. Base compensation/pay grade updates in HR actions and new notifications when base comp is changed via automatic pay grades/steps
Several of Camille’s direct reports have met their performance goals for the year and will be receiving salary increases. Wanting to avoid having to calculate retro pay for her employees, Camille decides to future-date the salary increases in her UKG Ready system. Previously, an error was sometimes displayed in the system saying that Employee Pay is not within the selected pay grade. With this latest enhancement, the system has been updated to apply the HR action’s effective date (the future date Camille selected) to the pay grade. This allows Camille to update and approve salary increases without an error message popping up as long as the base compensation is within the assigned pay grade for the future date.
Building off this enhancement, whenever Camille makes a change to an employee’s base compensation, a new notification is now automatically set off. This notification informs all parties involved about the change to the base compensation. Since Camille and the HR Department are notified of the change immediately, it begins the necessary processes they need to perform and the entire process of increasing her direct reports’ salary is streamlined.
Where it is: HR
Who will use it: HR and managers
7. Profiles: HR Action added to Review Effects in Performance Review Profiles
As mentioned above, several of Camille’s direct reports will be getting salary increases, and will end up receiving promotions, for meeting their performance goals. With the latest Profiles enhancement, Camille can now check off an HR Action box within the Review Effects widget of Performance Review Profiles. This means that once she submits an employee’s performance review, the salary increase and promotion process will automatically be triggered—instead of her having to manually generate a separate HR action. Once again, this saves Camille time and streamlines the promotion process for her employees.
Where it is: HR
Who will use it: Managers
8. Option to end performance reviews for terminated employees and option to reassign to-do items for terminated managers
Pedro is one of Camille’s direct reports. He ended up transferring to another location in a different state because his wife got a new job. Even though he still works for the organization, the organization is a separate entity with a unique Employer Identification Number, which means he will technically be terminated from his current company and hired at the new location. Camille has already kicked off his performance review and Pedro has already completed his self-review. With this enhancement as a part of the termination process, Camille can easily terminate Pedro’s performance review without leaving it as an outstanding review that appears incomplete.
Now, Pedro had some pending performance reviews in addition to his own self-review. With the option to reassign to-do items for terminated managers enhancement, Camille can immediately reassign a different manager to complete those performance reviews. This will trigger a list of to-do items to be sent to the new manager to alert him of his new tasks in order to get employees’ performance reviews completed as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Where it is: HR
Who will use it: HR
9. Option to bypass Employee Signature step in all to-do items reports
Thanks to the last two enhancements, Camille is on track to complete all performance reviews in a timely fashion. However, she did have an employee disagree with feedback from a review and refuse to sign her performance review. With this enhancement, Camille can now bypass the Employee Signature step, finalize the review, and have it recorded in the employee’s record. This enhancement helps clean up the process and ensure the feedback and necessary steps are finalized, even when an employee doesn’t agree with their review. Camille finishes up the review and sets up a time to meet with the employee and her manager to discuss the given feedback.
Where it is: HR
Who will use it: HR
Appendix
- For 24/7 access to release notes and user guides for the classic user experience, log in to your account and go to Our Company > Download Documents > Service Provider Documents within the UKG Ready solution.
- For 24/7 access to release notes and user guides, log in to your account and go to My Info > My Learning > Product Documentation within the UKG Ready solution.
- Bookmark the Release Readiness page in UKG Kronos Community for everything you need to learn about what’s new and what’s next.
- Visit the Announcements group in UKG Kronos Community to stay up to date on published release notes and future release dates.
- Alert groups provide you with important notifications on critical system updates. Not sure which alert group to join? Click here.
- To share ideas about new UKG Ready features or enhancements and to vote on fellow users’ ideas, log in to UKG Kronos Community and visit the IDEAS section.
- Review our technical highlights for easy reference to key release notes.
The content from this blog post is courtesy of Brad Nycz, customer success manager and former Kronos customer. Brad identifies key features in recent releases and Amanda translates them into story form. We hope you enjoyed this article on release 71! Please stay tuned for more real-life, relatable examples about UKG Ready features in action.