It seems as if UKG is heading towards the prototypical large company model of handling its employees. As an employee who transitioned over to UKG from Ultimate Software, I personally feel as if the moral, feel, and positive outlook from Ultimate Software is gone. At Ultimate Software I believed in the "People First" approach. It was easy to do so when the head of HR at the time Viv Maza let her passion for people shine through with all the initiatives to make work worthwhile. Before the merger Ultimate Software still had over 5000 employees. However, the feel and the culture still operated like a mom and pop shop. I still felt like I mattered in the grand scheme of things. Meaning that the executive level realized that the formula to truly making the company profitable was in making the investment into the employees themselves. Countless times as an Ultimate Software salaried employee I had to work 50+ hour weeks to reach deadlines etc. It felt justified in the sense that I knew the sacrifices were being made for me by the company with how they gave back to us via 401(k) Match, Really Great Benefits(In office masseuse twice a week when I was working at headquarters), Paid Lunches(Throughout the year, not just for special occasions), $20Gift Cards to Amazon On Your Birthday(5,000 employees would mean $100k Annually just for that). The old CEO[AND FOUNDER] was adamant about never laying off employees. He believed in the security of the employees way more than the numbers. I believed him. I found security in that. That was his secret to all of it.
Fast forward to post merger. It feels as if the sole purpose and drive of upper management and executives is to figure out just how lean can we operate to maximize profits. This includes expanding support services to India. Everything seems to be driven about business need and the bottom line. It is a business at the end of the day so I understand it. However, Scott(Founder) has shown a way to straddle both running a successful multi-faceted business and continuing to do right by your employees by still showing their value. It also feels as if the Ultimate Software Executive leadership team saw the overall direction we were heading as a company and bolted. The CTO(Who was the Son In Law of the Founder) and should have been next in line to run the "show", as he had over 20 years of experience in the company and knew the culture, the product from the ground up left. HR Superwoman Viv Maza left. Adam's(CTO) departure is what alarmed me the most. The fact that he decided not to even find a position worth staying for post merger. Surely there would have been a position at the executive level for him had he wanted it. The little touches that were there to feel as if we as employees mattered beyond workforce simply isn't there anymore. Everything feels so Corporate and sterile now. It makes the fact that on average we are paid less than our peers in the industry harder to swallow. It was an easy compromise when you can balance out the other benefits that are provided. But the Health Benefits package albeit still paid for by employer is nowhere near as competitive as it once was. Which is understandable business wise considering our staff has now doubled to over 10k employees and growing. When we were a 5k employee publicly traded company they used to provide us reports on how much they spent on Employee paid benefit deductions ($20 Million plus annually). I can't imagine what it would look like now with double the employees. But it is starting to show regardless of the reasoning. Working harder for a company that shows that they actually care about you is easy. Working harder for a corporation that seems to be so focused on driving internal costs down to increase external profits is very hard. It seems like the overall focus of all these initiatives that are being driven right now is to show potential investors just how lean the company can operate while turning out high volume numbers.