Jennifer Morgan, the first woman to lead a DAX-listed firm when she became co-CEO of SAP in 2019, now heads a U.S. operation that processes roughly one trillion dollars of payroll data each year. UKG, created in 2020 from the merger of Ultimate Software and Kronos, delivers human-resource services and workforce-management technology to about 65 million hourly and frontline employees across retail, health care and manufacturing sectors.
After moving to UKG in 2024 from Blackstone, one of the firm’s private-equity owners, Morgan says she has not observed a sharp rise in AI-driven vulnerability for frontline roles. She has nevertheless forged collaborations with Anthropic and OpenAI, aiming to embed generative-AI features that let workers arrange shifts around childcare commitments or volunteer for overtime when extra income is needed.
Morgan pitches AI-enhanced scheduling tools combined with analytics on wages, absenteeism and inefficient rosters as a way to trim the roughly one-trillion-dollar annual attrition expense that burdens U.S. employers. She points out that replacing a single hourly employee typically costs an organization about five thousand dollars, suggesting that even modest improvements in retention could generate substantial savings.
The chief executive’s plan repositions UKG from a provider of back-office tools to a “workforce intelligence hub” that leverages shift-level data for instant operational guidance. To support this shift, she has reshaped the senior team, swapping out roughly 80 percent of her direct reports and 40 percent of the next managerial layer, bringing in leaders experienced in scaling rapid, data-driven solutions.
Morgan devotes about a quarter of her schedule to direct customer interaction, meeting representatives from firms such as Marriott, the Mayo Clinic, PepsiCo and the Transportation Security Administration. She says that relaying both positive and critical observations from these engagements to her staff reinforces credibility and ensures that product decisions remain grounded in frontline realities.
She envisions a future where a worker’s app can instantly suggest shifts that meet a target earnings goal while respecting personal schedules, and where early wage-access features boost retention. Morgan cites a client that observed a fourteen-percent increase in employee stay rates among those who used earned-wage access, illustrating how AI-driven self-service can act as an advocate for individual needs.