UKG Ready HR software review

UKG is a global HR solutions provider on a mission to take its clients beyond individual software solutions by providing a “Workforce Operating Platform” that combines HR, payroll, and workforce management.

The organization aims to combine a deep understanding of people, HR processes, and AI to turn insights into confident decisions, and UKG provides a huge array of modules that span core HR functionality, payroll, data centralization, employee connectivity, and more.

For SMBs, UKG Ready is the all-in-one HR and payroll solution that gathers several of those modules together in a platform that’s built to guide and empower growing businesses.

For more options visit our guide to the best HR software

UKG Ready: Plans and pricing

It’s not uncommon to find HR solutions providers that are frustratingly unclear about pricing, and UKG doesn’t provide pricing information about UKG Ready – you need to request a quote.

UKG Ready pricing is devised on a case-by-case basis, and you’ll have to talk to the business to get a personalized quote. Positively, that means you’ll get numbers that are designed around your organization and its needs. Negatively, that makes initial research and comparison difficult.

UKG Ready is available in three plans: Essentials, Plus, and Premium. Different features are available at each level, and Essentials and Plus are restricted to businesses with less than 200 employees – so if you scale past that number, you’ll have to upgrade to the Premium option.

All three of those UKG Ready packages include core HR functionality like compliance, reporting, dashboards, graphical displays, and a mobile app. Each tier supports pre-built technology integrations, employee self-service, and the UKG Bryte AI system.

This new AI addition helps you streamline processes, reduce administrative burdens, and deliver personalized solutions to your employees. It can help you create job descriptions, uncover performance insights, manage shifts, improve engagement, analyze your organization, and more.

If the SMB-focused UKG Ready product isn’t going to be suitable for your business, then UKG Pro Workforce Management is the company’s enterprise-level solution.

UKG Ready: Features

The Essentials plan is just that – a basic HR offering suitable only for smaller organizations.

It includes employee directory and record management, HR actions and checklists, all-important customizable workflows, and new-hire onboarding. Essentials also offers timesheet and time-off management and employee schedule creation.

On the financial side, Essentials includes direct-deposit payroll runs, garnishments and vendor payments, tax deposits and filing, and automated state and local tax identification. This package also includes benefit deductions and integrations with third-party benefit administration tools.

The entry-level product rounds out its feature set with new-hire reporting, payroll comparisons, compliance analysis, and a dashboard with exporting options.

This is a basic offering that you can expand with more benefits and staff engagement features for an extra cost. If you pay more, you can add benefit plan designers, employee enrollment, automated carrier and financial connections, and year-end processing.

If you’d like an add-on product to enhance your employee engagement capability, you’ll get annual trust surveys, staff benchmarking and analytics, certification badges, and AI-assisted leadership recommendations.

Those benefit and employee engagement add-ons are included by default in the Plus tier, and this improved option also enhances the time and attendance module with support for shift differentials, pay premiums, and overtime pay.

Opt for the Plus package and you also get performance tools, including employee reviews, a rating builder, goal-setting and 90-day review functionality. You get recruitment features in this tier, too, including applicant tracking and reporting, an interview question generator, and modules to build external career sites and job requests.

The Plus tier adds learning management functionality and expense tracking, and you can pay extra to add leave tracking, pay grades, budget modeling, sentiment analysis, benchmarking, and employee burnout detection.

Invest in the Premium package and you get everything we’ve already mentioned here alongside some extra top-level features.

Premium enables position management in the employee directory, expanded checklist and workflow capability, the option to run global and certified payroll processes, project costing, and union management features.

The Premium tier includes drag-and-drop schedule builders, more flexibility around shift coverage, timecards, and shift-swapping, and the option for peer reviews, continuous feedback, and succession planning. It’s only at this level where you’ll find job board integrations and pre-screening questions for job applicants, too.

UKG Ready provides a great selection of features for SMBs with a particularly impressive slate of payroll, scheduling, and time-tracking capabilities. That said, be aware that many of those features are locked away in the higher tiers or provided as add-ons, so your costs may start to spiral if you want to add extra functionality to the system.

UKG Ready: Ease of use

At the time of writing, UKG wasn’t able to provide access to the software for this review, and the company doesn’t offer free trials.

User sentiment gives a good indication about what to expect, though, and many UKG Ready administrators praise the app’s logical design, its wide support for HR and payroll processes, and its strong option for customizable workflow creation. Users say that its views and filtering are impressive, and that its automated reporting is a strong point for the tool.

Negatively, administrative users say that UKG Ready suffers from a steep learning curve and occasionally complex design.

Employees using its self-service tools regularly say that UKG is a straightforward option for time, schedule, and PTO management, and that the mobile app is a highlight.

UKG Ready: Support

UKG provides customers with the same level of support no matter which UKG Ready package they’re using.

Support starts with training provided to system administrators when they deploy UKG Ready, and the business also offers rapid-response support for mission-critical incidents.

Elsewhere, the company provides access to product domain experts, an extensive HR and Payroll Resource Library, and a customer community forum.

Support requests are handled by a ticketing system, but there’s little indication on the product-facing website about the communication methods available or how long this will take.

UKG Ready: Competition

UKG Ready sits in a crowded SMB marketplace and is surrounded by rivals that excel in different areas.

If you’d prefer a solution that prioritizes payroll, then RUN Powered by ADP is a top choice alongside Gusto, and HiBob is a strong contender for any organization that needs advanced tools for employee engagement.

If the strong automation in UKG Ready is attractive but you want to weigh up your options, then Rippling also goes big on automation. And for simpler setup and a clean UI, BambooHR is a perennial favorite.

UKG Ready: Final verdict

UKG Ready is a rock-solid option for any SMB that needs a centralized platform for core HR, payroll, time tracking, and scheduling. It’s particularly well-suited to businesses with employees who work in shifts – and where compliance is a constant priority.

Positively, the three-tier pricing structure used by UKG Ready gives a logical upgrade path to SMBs looking to expand – but, negatively, it means lots of functionality is locked away behind unclear pricing structures and potentially prohibitive costs.

If you don’t mind talking to UKG Ready to get a quote and you’re prepared to pay extra for a fully-featured product, though, then this is well-suited to SMBs that need broad HR coverage and room to grow.