Hello and welcome! We’re just so excited to have everybody on the call today, spending some time with us to learn about the UKG New Experience. So I guess sit down, get ready. We have a a good lineup, some in insightful information, and an incredible session for you today. So let’s get started. The presentation today is focused for the UKG Pro Suite, so UKG Pro and WFM users. My name is Sandi Mundt. I am the Senior Manager of Marketing here at Ascend. And, for those of you who joined earlier, I am from Denver, the beautiful state of Colorado. And I’ll let my colleagues introduce themselves. Good morning, everybody. Kristine Zahm, the Manager of Change Management and Training here at Ascend, joining you from the exciting city of Nashville, Tennessee, and really excited to share with you more about the Experience today. Thanks! Crystal? Hello, everyone. I’m Crystal Bowman. I come from you from North Carolina. So I’m the Manager of Post Live Services here at Ascend. So super excited to be part of this! Great. Thank you so much. With that, let’s continue on. The agenda is pretty simple today. We’re just going to explain what is the new UKG Experience, what is actually changing in the UI, when is it changing, a little checklist of maybe some adoption to get your team some early adoption or what what they need to do. And then we have a very special guest with us today, Denise Hurd. Hey. And Denise is going to share with us her Experience working with our training and change management team on how we’ve helped them with the new UKG Experience. Before we get started in the presentation, just really wanted to share with you who Ascend is for those of you who may be unfamiliar with us as a UKG partner. We have been an exclusive and award winning partner with UKG since 2016. We have been recognized with eight years of a partner award winner. We deliver end-to-end UKG services. So we cover the full suite from UKG Pro, UKG WFM, and UKG Ready, and we deliver from deployment to optimization to long term managed services so that we can ensure your investment continues to deliver value from what you’ve what you’ve acquired from UKG. So, again, for more than two decades, we’ve been in the industry and for the last decade exclusively focused on UKG. We do support small, midmarket, and enterprise customers, and we have over 800 customers throughout the US, Canada, and globally today. With that, we always like to start our webinars off by asking the audience a little question to get the stage set. So if you could just answer this question for us, we’re curious. What do you anticipate the biggest challenges with an end user adoption of a new of the new UKG Experience going to be? We’re going to see how this kind of reflects itself at the end of the presentation. So we’ll give this about twenty seconds for everybody to put in their responses. And they’re still coming in because we do have a pretty large crowd today. And it looks like our two key winners are navigating it in general and then preparing the team. And so today, we will definitely cover both of those items. They’re slowing down, so I’m going to give this poll a little countdown, Sandy. So let’s give it a five, four, three, two, one. Let’s share the results of our poll here. Alright. Look at that. We’ve got some folks that are already using it. That is amazing. Some people who are a little bit ahead of the game. Wonderful. That’s what we’re going to be talking about today. Where do we even begin? We will help you. We will help you get started. So what is the New UKG Experience? Alright. It’s a redesigned interface that’s going to make using UKG easier. With simpler menus and clear consistent layout, you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for more quickly. There’s this task-based overview page that we’re going to be highlighting in our demo today that brings those pages right to the forefront, making actions a little more intuitive, easier to find, so that you can get things done more quickly. At a high level, the updates about making the system feel simpler and more intuitive for everyday use. All of your users will continue to see what’s relevant to them, keeping those security roles intact, but it’s going to look a little bit more different than what they’re used to. Navigation is going to be cleaner and easier to follow, especially for our folks that are Pro WFM Suite users. You’re going to you’re not going to see those two tabs anymore. It’s going to be one integrated Experience. But fear not. Nothing’s going away or disappearing. There’s just going to be a more streamlined and centralized location to find all of your actions. The goal ultimately, we want to help users find what they need more quickly, making tasks just fewer steps overall. And good news, the consistent look and feel is actually going to go across platform into our ancillary modules as well, talent, recruiting, onboarding, etcetera. And that’s going to help create a smoother Experience for you over time. Overall, we think these changes are really positive. We saw in the poll some folks are already using this, and, we think that’s excellent that you’re proactive adopters. It’s going to require our users to adjust. Something that they were doing very quickly that they were click, click, click, getting used to where they needed to go, approving time cards or finding pay information, that’s going to change for them. And so we want to make sure that we are prepared through communications and training to roll that out. So let’s take a look at what it looks like in practice. We’re going to go through a couple of screenshots, high level, I promise. Then we’ll get into the good stuff with a demonstration. Alright. So right out of the gate, here is the Pro homepage. We see some things that are looking familiar to us, that same comfortable, center of the page. We have things like shortcuts, same great functionality. The main menu being on the left-hand side is a primary source of navigating around. But do you want to draw your attention right up to the top? We’re going to talk a lot about this toggle, Try the new look. This is something that you can choose to turn on. That way users can decide, do we want to use the new look and feel or not? And a great part of a plan of proactive adoption, get that toggle adoption, get that toggle on so that folks are able to, revert back to what they’re used to if they need to. But as far as what’s new, we’re seeing new icons and logos, just a general softer feel, with one of the main changes really being to the left navigation. That’s going to start to stack on top. So if you’ll flip over, I kind of want to zoom into the the left navigation. We have our classic interface on the left, and I’m going to talk a lot about that Pro and WFM opportunity since we are seeing those integrated. If you’re a Pro only user, this far left screenshot in the classic interface is looking really familiar to you. There’s tabs at the top, favorite, myself, my team. Probably for a lot of people here, we’re also administrators and, have access to configuration as well. Where we’re narrowing down those system areas based on what we can do. With our WFM, that middle screenshot looking familiar as we’re primarily going to be navigating based on modules. But with the new interface, the left navigation is all going to be integrated with our screens. We’re able to see time options right there involved with our pay and people information. If you have ancillary modules such as recruiting and onboarding, all of that’s going to be available to you on the left hand side of the screen. New interface, one menu, stacked on top of each other. We’ll take a look at what this looks like, for those who are accessing, WFM now through Pro. So in the new look, again, you’re not going to have two tabs, but we’ll see what’s in the center of the screen is very familiar. That WFM homepage is presenting with our same functional tiles, data views, action items, but it’s integrated into our left menu through something that’s called time overview. Same with our time cards. These are going to be accessed through time, team time, but the functionality is the same. We have some general UI. We’re kind of seeing this across all different types of platforms, getting a little bit of an upgrade, whether that’s the fonts, colors of our icons, and that that doesn’t change here. These time cards are still going to function the same. How we’re accessing them is going to be different. And I don’t want to underestimate that this goes over for our employees as well. Some of our users, we’re still maybe struggling to get them to appropriately use the system. And so with change like this can feel it’s like an interruption. What we see here is an example of time overview for the employees, and again, we’ll see that familiar WFM homepage. Another thing that has actually been out, but we want to make sure that it’s highlighted is the My Inbox. Alright? We won’t talk about it in much detail today. There’s My Inbox and the inbox. That’s been out through a couple of releases. But now with the what is coming in this new interface, again, Pro WFM Suite users, you’re going to be getting notifications to one inbox. So that notification bell at the top right hand corner is going to serve for maybe timekeeping scheduling notifications as well as any, approval flows you may be integrated into with your Pro, maybe changing somebody’s job, changing a salary. That’s going to be one streamlined look, and we’ll look at that in practice today. Crystal, can you expand a little bit more on what’s changing with some of our ancillary modules? Absolutely. So ancillary modules is kind of my bread and butter. Right? So this is my the fun stuff for me. So we’re going to have a lot of different changes, mostly just visible changes. Right? Just kind of how the different look and feel is. But the main thing is going to be that overall system navigation. Right? That’s going to be kind of the main the main thing we see. Like, how do I go to do my job? Right? Like, where do I go do to run payroll? Where do I go to approve time off? Where do I go to open a requisition? Right? That’s going to be the main thing. It’s just that general navigation. The employee Experience is another area, right, where we’re going to be seeing changes. We’re going to be seeing those changes in, you know, where do I go to access my pay stub to put in direct deposit information, things like that. Where do I go see that information? And then once again, there’s ancillary modules. The administrative Experience is going to be a little bit different as well. So seeing those workflows, where I go to make adjusting adjustments to those roles, unlocking accounts, right, our basic day to day tasks. Thank you for highlighting that. We don’t want it to get missed in the overall Experience and the improvements that UKG is is making to the system and how easy it’s going to be for everybody. But I think that’s enough of the screenshots. Why don’t we jump over into a live demonstration? We’re going to highlight a couple resources that are available to you all so that you can start. If you are not quite using this yet, You can go into the Experience, play around with it, and start to develop your plan of how you’re going to roll this out. Crystal, you want to lead us in that? Absolutely. Alright, folks. So one of the coolest features that UKG offers to us as customers, right, is what’s called the UKG Pro Experience. So, first, I’m going to show you that because I think this is going to be a vital piece of you guys kind of testing this out and testing the waters a little bit, right, before you roll it out to your to your team. So first, you have to be logged into Community. Right? So that’s one one key thing. Once you’re in Community, if you come up here to the top under learn and go to UKG Pro, then as we scroll on down, you’re going to see here in about the center of the page under resources, we have something called the UKG Pro Experience where you can test and explore UKG Pro. And this is like I said, I love this function. As a practitioner, I use this anytime a release came out, anytime I needed to test something out, we didn’t have a test environment, this was my go to. Right? So we here in the center, we can choose our country of residence, the functional area that we want to test. Right? So maybe out today, I’m payroll. Right? I want to jump in as a payroll runner. And then our role here, I can say, am I a system administrator, am I a payroll administrator, am I a compensation administrator? So it’s going to give us a few example roles. When we select that role, now it’s going to give me a username and password. So I’m going to go ahead and copy our username here. Click enter as Payroll Administrator. It’s going to open it up in a new tab, which is awesome because I don’t have to scribble down that password. I can come back over here and grab the the password here, paste that in, and sign in. And you’ll see this is a actual working environment of UKG’s. Right? That is now I’m a payroll administrator. So you’ll see up here in the the top left hand corner here that we do have the option to try our new look, which we’re going to talk about that toggle here in just a minute. But this is this functionality is awesome. So as a payroll administrator, now I can come in here and change my payroll processes or whatever I need to do, run a test payroll with a with a benefit change. I can do that here. One important thing to note is this is a test environment, so it is wiped out every night at midnight. So if you are testing something, make sure you finish your testing before you finish for the day. Otherwise, you’re going to come in the next morning and try to pick back up, and all your hard work’s going to be gone. So, but you have the ability here to try this new look and go in and and and go through that process. Right? Go try to run a payroll. Go try to change a workflow. Try to unlock somebody’s account with this new look on. Right? Alright. So let’s jump into a different environment. So here is our what we all know and love. Right? Our normal, I call it, old faithful environment here as we’ve got it. You’ll notice up here in the top left hand corner, I’ve got this try our new look. So this is not going to be on for everybody out of the box. Right? So the first thing I want to do is I want to kind of walk you through this a little bit so you can see where we go, how do we turn this on. So from this old view, you’re going to come up here to System Configuration, our little gear icon or wheel cog. We’re going to come down to System Settings and then Display. Once this loads here, we’re going to click Edit, and we can scroll on down. In about middle of ways of the page, you’re going to see Udate to the latest look and feel. And we’ve got three options here, so we can have it turned off for everybody. So we’re just sticking with our old interface. Right? On for everybody. There’s no option. This is the new interface. Right? That’s the way that one is. And then user’s choice. This gives the person that’s logged in the ability to toggle on and off like we’ve done up here. So that’s where you can make that change. You decide which one you want and save. We prefer user’s choice. Right? That way as a as a I’m going to keep jumping back to my payroll as an example. My payroll administrator, I know how to do my job in this view, but how do I do it in here? And maybe I’ve got something urgent, I don’t have time to to hunt, right, for that new functionality or where that’s located. I can just toggle right back over. Alright. So let’s jump back here to our home page, and let’s click the big red button. Right? Let’s try our new look and see what that looks like. So we’re going to go ahead and try our new look. It is going to prompt me. So if I’m in the middle of something, hey. Let’s save this. Right? So I’m going to go ahead and continue. And here we have it. Here’s our fresh new look. Looking so beautiful. And thank you for walking through how to get to the Experience. That’s definitely a recommendation that we make to utilize the Experience as a tool so that as an administrator, can play around with it first. There are some questions in the q and a and in the chat about how to turn it on, so we’ll make sure to share those resources with you all as well. But it’s so great to be out of a screenshot to see this in practice. As far as our classic interface, you have the option. You can toggle it on, that would be a default to the classic, and then they can choose to toggle on, and they can always choose to toggle back. So as far as some of the questions we get around, what would we recommend, build into your plan an opportunity for them to be able to revert back to something that feels comfortable at least for a short period of time. That’s just going to build a little bit of security, and allow for them to self troubleshoot if there are challenges. But we’re seeing a lot of the same things that we saw on our screenshots. I’m going to ask Crystal just to interact with it a little bit. One of the questions we got was around the search. That search was previously found on the left navigation. That’s now going to be at the top of the home page. So you can come up here, search for various system areas. Recall, you can always click your logo, in this case, UKG, to come back to this home page at any point. We have same but similar, similar but upgraded look to our shortcuts. So we still have our shortcuts in the center of the page with the ability to edit. We can manage those shortcuts. But again, text is looking a little bit different, generally just a different feel. Right? Let’s move over to some of the things we’re seeing on the left navigation. We talked about the removal of those tabs at the top, stacking everything on top of one another. So if you’ll just scroll down, we can see the options for myself. Right? Based on my security role, if I have others that I lead, I see my team. If I’m an administrator or involved in any of our ancillary workflows, such as recruiting and onboarding, now I’m going to find those stacked one on top of each other where I click on one of those areas to view the pages and the subsequent pages underneath. So some of our WFM functionality kind of blending in with our Pro. I think a lot of folks here are probably in that administrative bucket, so this can get a little long. Let’s show them how we can click show to narrow down how we can access different system areas. So right now, it’s showing all. I can limit that. Maybe let’s select my team. Awesome. And now you guys can see how that is going to slim down your choices, and again, a little bit more integrated and streamlined. Something else that we called out in our screenshots that I want to interact with here is the notification bell. We’re getting a lot of amazing questions about this. There’s obviously some configuration settings, but if you are currently receiving notifications to WFM and to Pro, that workflow is going to be the same. It’s just going to come to this one integrated inbox where everything is coming into one, and you can manage that a little bit more easily. So I can see I’ve got some actions I need to take. I can quickly start that and launch those from here, view details, and take action. And, Kristine, that’s a that’s a really good point. Right? So everything’s going to come here to our bill icon. Previously, with that old interface, we were used to see and I’m going to quickly scroll down here to the bottom. We were used to seeing our inbox somewhere down here at the bottom. And with the new interface, our inbox here is going to be under myself and communications. Right? So we’ll see and as Kristine mentioned, we’ve got both options enabled for our our environment here. But we the same functionality. It’s just located in a different place. So we’ll click on my inbox here, and we can see all of the same items that we can see accessing the bell icon, but we can see it here in a full page view. Do have a couple little updates if you guys are not used to the the new functionality of the my inbox. You can see here all urgent, unread. You can see action items as well as updates that are, you know, have been made based off of workflows that you are a part of. And I see some great questions about the inbox in the q and a. Crystal’s ‘s going to take a chance to try and answer some of those specifics about how our ancillary modules are going to flow in, and we’ll definitely try and respond to every question that we’re getting today. So thank you so much everyone for submitting those. Crystal, I don’t want to overlook our employees. They are also in the system. Sometimes they’re not as familiar with, the the platform overall. Maybe they’re not logging in here as often, and so they’re going to have a little bit of a change. Can we go to, pay and just highlight what that new pay overview page looks like? Absolutely. So, previously, you know, we would have under myself, we would have pay, a different option for direct deposit, a different option for, you know, where do I go to update my taxes? Where do I go to see my pay stubs? So this pay overview page is really just that. It’s a nice clean overview page. It’s kind of a one stop shop for everything that that employee’s going to need. Right? So we can see here that this employee last was paid on March 10th. We can see how much was paid, where the money with how the money was distributed, as well as access all of my previous pay statements, my direct deposit, and so on. It also gives our year-to-date statistics and our total compensation, which is nice. So this is a really just kind of like I said, a one stop shop for your employees so they don’t have to hunt and peck for anything. It’s all right here on one page. And that overview is something that I want to explore for all of our roles because this is a huge benefit of the new look and feel. It’s making, bringing all of those options onto one page. We don’t need to reference the left navigation or even that right things I can do to navigate anymore. So this is a benefit for you all, but it is a change of the rhythms that you’re used to. So let’s explore the same kind of overview type of page for managers. Can we go to the team overview, please? Absolutely. So same concept here, kind of a one stop shop. This one, we do have our role option here where if you have different roles, you can change between your roles if you are in this example, I’m a manager and then department manager and a super admin. If I need to toggle between those roles, that’s still there. We also have our insights here. So previously, I may have needed a BI report or to go and hunt and find, you know, birthdays or something like that in those standard reports. Now we have the ability to add those insights right here on my home page. So I can click into manage insights, and I can toggle on or off whatever I would like to see as a manager. I’ve also got the ability to search here for my employees just like I’ve always been able to. I’m going to have the same filters. If I need to come into an employee and make changes, maybe I’m doing a job salary change or something like that performance review, I can click into these just like I’ve always been able to. Moving on down here, depending on your access, right, is the access that you’ll have here. So in this example, we can this this manager is able to handle disciplinary actions and grievances, salary planning, things like that. So it really depends on your roles, but anything that you can do based for an employee is going to be right here under these bottom areas. And so, again, bringing everything into that overview page is allowing you to launch off into your next task or relevant item more quickly. Again, we don’t have to go back to the left navigation and kind of sort around for what we’re looking for. So it is a benefit, but it’s going to feel a little different and kind of clunky at first as all changes typically do. Let’s quickly highlight our administrative view. Can you go to the admin team overview, please? Yes. So most of the folks on the call are most likely this is where this tab in the system config area is where your bread and butter is. Right? This is where you spend most of your time. Very similar. Right? We have the ability to turn on insights. As an administrator, if I turn this on, it’s going to be, you know, whole company. Right? So that may be a little bit overwhelming, but it’s nice to have if you want to be able to turn that on. Same concept, I can search for employees and make edits to them just like I could on the old view. Now down here is where things get a little bit fun. Right? So previously, especially for, like, a recruiting and onboarding, if you are the one that hires folks from recruiting or onboarding into Pro, we now see that’s here under team overview, right, our process hire. Where previously, that was a sub option under recruiting or under onboarding. Now it’s here separately. This is also where we can come in and do our mass updates. We can merge employees, delete employees, handle those disciplinary actions, right, document acknowledgments, and so on. So once again, I I know I keep saying one stop shop, but it really is. It’s a one stop shop where you don’t have to hunt. We don’t have that things I can do on the page or in the area, you know, things like that. You really do have a a nice clean one stop shop to to access these areas. And, Crystal, while we’re on the admin page, let’s just reiterate those configuration settings you all you already have set up, that is not going to change. It’s just where we’re locating that functionality. So, you can still go in there and all obviously, always go and audit your security settings, make sure that everything is accurate across your roles. But we’re really going to start to learn how to lean on these overview pages as a launching point for our next steps. And I love one stop shop because it truly is, all right there for you. Yeah. And and the really nice thing Kristine mentioned, you know, you can go in and audit your roles. But once you turn this on, if you come out here and look as a manager and like, oh, a manager shouldn’t be able to do that. Right? We that’s right? That’s a easy look. Right? Because delete employees is there under managers, and maybe they shouldn’t be able to do that as an example. Right? So that is a quick look at. You know, you can just look at that and be like, oh, they can’t do that. Let me go fix that. That shouldn’t have been turned on, or they’re missing such and such. They should be able to do this. So it’s definitely going to be kind of a an eye opening, I think, for for folks once they can take a look at this. I agree. We’ve mentioned the ancillary modules. They don’t want that to get missed because this new look and feel is going to enhance those as well. Can we quickly hop into the recruiting and maybe talent, modules just to give a preview of what that looks like? Yeah. So let’s come right over here and take a look. Previously, this would say recruiting gateway, and you would have that process hires or onboarding gateway and process hires. So now as I mentioned, our process hires here is under our team overview and team management. So let’s jump into recruiting. And for both Recruiting and Onboarding, you’re going to see this nice clean look. You should see a nice clean look. I apologize. Our test environment’s being a little bit fussy. But you should see happens when you need it to work right. Absolutely. Let’s see. Talent or Onboarding maybe. Yeah. Let’s try onboarding here. There we go. Nice clean looking onboarding. So we have our new in menu options here over on the left hand side. Our dashboard and onboarding looks very similar. Nothing’s changed as far as our dashboard has gone. We still have our onboarding status, our employment verification, and and so on, but we do see a much cleaner look here on the left hand side. Right? So that’s a that updated look here. If we jump back, we can take a look here in the talent administration area. So this is where our goals, right, is going to be our succession, things like that. So once again, we have a clean look here. Right? So if we go look at distributed for reviews here, we’ll point out a couple little changes. So we notice here we have all of the same actions that we previously had. We have our list of employees and the reviews that have been distributed. We have all the dates, the status, all those things. What you will notice up here at the top though is previously under each of these, it would have the description, and that’s just not there anymore. But you can highlight over these. You can hover, and it will tell you what each of these does. So just a little bit of a change. These are enhancement to your day to day workflow, and we genuinely believe across ancillary modules, even something as small as changing the look and feel, the colors, streamlining everything, it is going to make it easier for you, for your employees, for your managers in there doing a lot of work. But let’s not underestimate the change that this could feel like for some users that are, like I said, not in the system as often, not as familiar or comfortable with technology. She highlighted all of these visual changes, and, the last thing I want to make sure that we touch on are those the administrative setup, and how we’ll see some edits to the admin. Yeah. So if we come here and set up. Yeah. Under system config and application setup, previously, we had individual items over on the left hand side for each one of these areas. So now we just go to one place, and it’s got everything that we need. It also has a really nice search feature. So if I’m like, oh, I don’t know where where I need a role, but I or a a workflow, but I don’t know where to find it. I can type in workflow or start to type in workflow, and it’s going to take me right to what I need. Right? And then within each of these, I can open them up, and it’s going to give me the details of like I’m previously used to. Right? So if we scroll down a bit and let’s take a look here at the security and identity because as an administrator, something that we do on a regular basis is unlock accounts, reset passwords, things like that. Right? This is where we’re going to access that. So notice that’s in a little bit of a different area. Right? So it’s still under application setup and under security and identity, but it’s here under user administration. Once we get into this, you’ll see that that’s going to look just like it used to. Right? I can come in here, hunt for my employee. I can mark them as active, reset their password, and so on. Right? So nothing there has changed. Just how you get there. Right? So you’re going to see that as far as this is also where we’re going to update our roles. As Kristine mentioned earlier, this is going to give you a good opportunity to kind of audit your roles and make sure everything is working the way and access is correct. Right? This is also where we’re going to go in and and access that information. Now we’re going to Oops. Sorry. It’s okay. We’re going to give a bit of a full circle moment here. So if we come down here to system config and we come back down to display, this screen should look familiar. Right? A little bit of a different look and feel, but right here is where we can turn that look and feel on. Right? So we can make changes to that. So we’re preparing ahead of time right before that decision is made for us in November. So we can here come in here. And once once we’ve got our documentation and we’ve been preparing for everything, we can come in and make sure we can go ahead and turn this on for everybody once we’re ready. Yeah. Don’t let this change just happen to you. And we’ll talk about that and the planning and the resources here in a moment. As we’re in application setup, I want to shout out to our Pro WFM suite users that those WFM application setup is going to be found here as well. So your application setup is becoming one menu, one set of options, and at minimum, you all need to start creating a plan to getting used to, those changes and so that you’re familiar with the layout, and where you go again to manage the system. Right. We talked a little bit about having a plan. So the resources here we’ve highlighted so far, the Experience, utilize that. We saw a shout out in the chat. Didn’t have a test environment. Yes. Definitely go to the Experience and utilize that as a tool. There’s a lot of information available to you on the community. And then once you are ready to proceed forward, you can come here and change those those display settings. Thank you so much, Crystal, for walking us through that. And now that we’ve seen what the changes actually look like and before we step into some recommendations as well as, available resources, we want to do another quick poll. We want to know what tasks are you a little bit concerned about? What do we think might be a little challenging for our users or maybe even for yourself? And you know what, Sandi and Sandy, I can’t see as these responses are coming in. So you guys just let me know when we’re ready to, release that to the wild. Everyone can just go ahead and take a quick poll for us. We just want to know, and I think our everyone else here might be good to see. What else are we really worried about? Yep. We’ve got some responses coming in. We’ll give it another 15 seconds. Yeah. So right now, leading the challenges is navigating between the modules, core, WFM, etcetera. Yeah. What’s behind that is accessing reports and analytics. But to be honest, the the winner is or the two winners are unsure and all of it. Yeah. I feel that. It is a little unsure and all of it. There’s some, I would say, planning and stock that we need to take as an organization. What where do we really think this is going to impact and analyzing overall, what resources we currently have out there that are going to be out of date, etcetera. So let’s talk about, how we can support you with some of this. Thank you so much for putting that poll up. First, I want to talk about the When. When is this happening? We do have a large amount of information available. We’re going to drop that URL to the community for the new Experience in the chat for you all. I highly recommend that you all are going to release notes and setting up some sort of, I don’t know, monthly, weekly, if you so dare, go in the community and make sure that you’re staying up to date with this. So what we have seen so far, mid-September last year, test environments turned on the toggle. So we had some customers that were going live, that toggle became available, and we started to have the opportunity to open those discussions. Which one are we going to go live in? In October, that was released out into production environments as well. Based on the most release, most recent release notes, we see that this toggle is not going to be available to you come November 2026. Alright? Hot off the press, there might be some information we’re validating if that is going to, move up a little bit within the year. But I think it’s safe to say that UKG is communicating this very clearly. Pay attention to those emails and release notes. But definitely fall of this year, we’re going to see that toggle go away. And what we want to prevent is that this change is not happening to you, that your organization is prepared as they’re continually enhancing the Experience, the features, running additional testing, and that you all have an opportunity to go through some of that as well before they confirm this new look and feel. I just was kind of skimming some of the questions, the Q&A that we’re getting. A big one we got is, will there still be the classic homepage? The answer is, come this release in the fall, no. We will all be moving into this new look and feel for Pro and Pro WFM Suite. OK. So now that we’ve kind of touched on the win, let’s talk about an Adoption Checklist. How are you going to make this happen? And we can’t go there to the tools yet until we talk about the benefits of being a proactive adopter. When users know what to expect, they’re going to adopt changes more quickly and ultimately use the system in the way that it’s intended. So organize organizational planning and preparation is going to reduce operational delays, rework, and dependency on support teams. And I’d like to say that’s a lot of who’s on this call today, so let’s not get those tickets too high. Make sure they’re prepared. You’re going to provide clear role-based guidance that can help employees feel more comfortable and capable on day one. Not as big as a go live, but still a change nonetheless. All of this preparation is really going to be an effort that is used ongoing. Right? All of those materials you have currently, anything that’s been sent out or sitting in your LMS, that look is going to, not be the same anymore, and that can be really impactful. Also think about folks that you’re onboarding. Right? If you have materials there that exist, they’ve never seen this system before, and it doesn’t match the new look and feel. So we want to create resources that are going to be, be evergreen. Ultimately, all of this preparation, just prevents you from making this a disruption and makes it an opportunity to reinforce best practices and consistency in system usage. Maybe you’re already having some struggles. This is a great opportunity for us to, integrate policies, business processes as we’re introducing the new look and feel. Our most successful organizations are going to treat this update proactively with targeted communications, role based training, and practical job aids. Lucky for us, UKG has done some of this work for you. We’re again going to drop the link into the chat. Go explore the Community. There’s a lot of tools out there for you. What I will say, this checklist hits out there and available, but we’re going to provide it. Number one, make a plan. I think I’ve said it. Don’t let this just happen to you. And I would recommend that we’re working backwards. Right? When do you want the new look and feel to be permanently turned on for your organization? Does that align to you, UKG, or do you want a little more control over that? How long are you going to turn on that toggle? We do recommend that you have that on for a period of time. Again, allow people to fail safely if they need to, especially yourselves as administrator. One of the big changes we called out was with the admin setup. So can you revert back if you need to and self troubleshoot? And then ultimately, we’re thinking about what training materials do we currently have that desperately need to be updated? How else can we weave in any policy and businesses, excuse me, policies and business processes that perhaps we’ve been kind of looking to do a little refresh on anyways? As you’ll see here, this kind of follows our steps. Right? Update your materials. Use the job aids and walk throughs that they’ve made available to you. There are some, UKG available links here that you guys can explore, see if those are tools that would apply to your organization. And then this is a part of an overall recommendation of giving yourself a little bit of wiggle room in controlling this rollout. Don’t be afraid to gather feedback. See how you can continue to improve. Again, don’t let that that fall date roll up on you and happen to you. Have an opportunity to refine and get a feedback. And, of course, clear, visible communication through multiple channels is always a best practice for effective change management. So, with that, I would like to introduce, Denise Hurd. Just kind of open up a candid discussion with someone that can speak to their journey with the Experience so far and hope that this will be helpful for you all to hear kind of real-world application. Denise is with, an HRIS analyst with ProAmpac, an organization that has chosen, again, to be proactive about this change. She’s been engaged with the Ascend training team and helping her roll out the new UKG Experience for timekeeping, recruiting, and onboarding. So welcome, Denise. Can you first introduce yourself? I’m so glad you’re here. Can you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about ProAmpac and then we’ll jump into some of our questions. Sure. So Denise Hurd, HRIS Analyst. Been with ProAmpac for almost seven years now. We actually just moved into UKG ourselves in 2024, so the whole thing is new to us. Right? And then within that year, here comes the new look, and we’re like, “Crap!” But ProAmpac’s been around for quite some time. We are constantly acquiring new companies. We’re a packaging company, and pretty much any type of packaging that you can really think of, we are the ones who create that for you. So food packaging, health care products, lawn and guarding packaging. So we have our hands in a wide variety of things. And across the globe as well. Across the a lot to take on. You touched on it just a little bit, but can you expand for me on just your initial concerns when you heard about, the new Experience and the change to the UI? Yes. So our reaction honestly was very overwhelming and a bit panicked, especially when it comes to a training perspective. We had just went live, like I said, in January of 2024. We’re still very much in growth and build mode within some of our modules, and then we’re constantly launching new countries into that system every year. So when we heard about the new look and feel rolling out with the R2 release last year, we were under the impression at first that UKG might force that new Experience in January of 2026, which created a lot of urgency on our team. At that same time, we were right in the middle of building out our Europe team as well as trying to support our US and Canadian teams that were already live in UKG. And now adding that creation and preparing to host additional trainings on the new look of UKG. Our biggest concern was how and when we would update all of our current videos, our job aids, how do we retrain those existing teams who are using UKG and support multiple regions at once. So needless needless to say, stress levels were absolutely an overdrive in Quarter Four. Yeah. And I know there was a lot of uncertainty last year. I can’t imagine what y’all were going through. And, you know, with existing materials and trying to roll out, just kind of expand on what led you to seek support, with the Ascend training team. Sounds like it was just generally overwhelmed with all the go lives. Speaker 4 Absolutely. So with us going live in 2024, we did choose a phased approach with UKG module rollouts. That way we avoided overwhelming our teams during our go live. And because of that approach, we had already had a strong working relationship with Ascend. They knew our system, our timelines, and how we use UKG. So when we learned that Ascend could also build training content, it was a no brainer. It was just that natural extension of that partnership that we already had with Ascend, and one of the biggest selling points for us was Ascend’s ability to translate training materials into multiple languages. This has always been a long-standing gap us as we support teams in US, Canada, and Europe, and more countries planned in the next three years and having that reliable accurate translations was critical. So we brought this forward to our executive leadership team. We got quick buy in, and that’s when we move forward. Yeah. So we ultimately translated, we developed in English and translated quite a few different resources. If you don’t mind, I’ll kind of list it off. We did job aids, videos, interactive simulations, and that was really helpful not only for your ongoing rollout, but to, you know, essentially provide some remedial resources for those that already went live. Exactly. Exactly. So like you said, you know, our focus with what we used for for Ascend was those simulations, our job aids, because that was the format that our teams were familiar with. The simulations have been a game changer. They’re interactive. They force the users to actively click through steps instead of passively just watching, and it keeps them engaged. Let’s be honest. I know I’m guilty of this, you know, having a training video playing in the background while you’re doing other work. We consider that multitasking. Right? And those simulations help eliminate that and they genuinely help with retention of the content. From what I’ve seen, the job aids are very clean. They’re simple. They provide clear step-by-step references and they are easy to keep open while completing tasks in the system. So with both of those options, we feel that we have some good materials for our team. That’s wonderful to hear. Thank you so much for sharing that. Can you expand for everybody here just what the support has done to alleviate stress and save time for your team and just the overall organization with everything you’ve got going on? The impact was huge stress release for our team. Creating the training materials takes hours upon hours, especially if you want them done well. And partnering with Ascend meant that we didn’t have to scramble to find the time to rebuild everything, and we avoided that burnout during an already intense quarter four. It was a massive time saver, and it gave us confidence that we were prepared, we’re not playing catch up, and we’ll be ready when we officially toggle on that new Experience in Quarter Three. So you are a proactive adopter. This is, what we’re strongly encouraging everybody consider do, analyze your organization, figure out where that is needed. And I know that you’ve started to roll out some of those materials already. Will you share a little bit about some of the benefits that you’ve already seen with just user confidence and overall transition success? So we’ve already rolled this out with our Ireland team who just went live January of this year. Feedback has been extremely positive. Our next groups are going to be Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. And early feedback so far from users is that the trainings are simple. They’re easy to follow. They’re not too long or overwhelming, and they’re very clear and to the point. The team does feel confident completing tasks accurately using those simulations and the job aids that Ascend help us create. And from a readiness standpoint, we feel very positioned, when we’re ready to roll out the new Experience to our older users in the US and Canada. So what advice do you have with everything you guys have planned and been through? What would you share with our participants today about preparing for the New Experience? I’m going to piggyback off of what you told them. Please plan ahead. Don’t wait till September or October to start thinking about updating your training materials. Ascend already knows the UKG system, so you’re getting those SMEs that’s going to build your content, not someone who’s trying to learn as they go. Right? Because I struggle using the new Experience myself. So lord knows I probably couldn’t build that training myself. You can tailor the materials to be as simple or as detailed as you want them to be so that you can include your company specific processes. The ability to scale and translate and deliver high quality training across regions is a game changer, And partnering with Ascend was absolutely worth it, and I’d do it again without hesitation. Thank you so much, Denise. It’s wonderful to have you on. And hopefully, everybody here gets as much value out of hearing from somebody who has been going through this, planning, and really just see the time and the impact that it can have on our users, and on our own small but mighty teams to ensure that we are prepared for this rollout. So thank you, Denise, so much. Thank you. Well, as as you guys are considering your own situation and plan, I want you to recall the UKG resources. Again, we’re going to share this deck and those links with you. Go on to the Experience, play around with it, monitor the release notes, make sure you know when this is happening as, the summer continues and we get more information from UKG. But I can’t help myself, shameless plug. If you are looking for support, we are here to guide you whether you need your current materials updated. Maybe we need to create some new training materials. You’ve seen an opportunity for this anyways, and the new opportunity is a good open door for you to come in and create those, we would love to support you with that. A variety of training documentation, as Denise provided, those interactive elearning simulations, whether, you know, remedial training, those are all things that we can provide, as well as a customized communication strategy. At minimum, just being open and transparent with your users is going to make a successful adoption. I think, like, three times more likely to be successful if you’d send us some communications. If we’re singing you know, sending those out frequently in multimodal, that’s going to go into, like, seven times more likely to be successful. So at minimum, we would love to support you with that. Thank you so very, very much Kristine, Crystal, and a special thank you and appreciation to Denise Hurd for sharing your story with the audience today. We have about four minutes, which is not a lot of time. There are a lot a lot of questions in the Q&A but just know that we will follow up with any of the questions that are posted in the Q&A, whether that means Crystal and and Kristine and their teams answer to you individually. Well, again, we appreciate you, and thank you for joining our webinar today. Go out and enjoy your Thursday and have a wonderful day.