How UKG Puts AI to Work for Frontline Employees
CIO, Wednesday, May 6th, 2026
UKG's CIO discusses using agentic AI and voice agents to transform frontline worker experiences and democratize innovation.
Prakash Kota, CIO of UKG, explains how the company leverages AI to benefit frontline workers who comprise 80% of the global workforce, often overlooked in AI discussions focused on knowledge workers.
UKG uses agentic AI for dynamic workforce operations, voice agents to streamline shift requests and worker interactions, and autonomous agents like People Assist for employee onboarding.
The company employs a democratized innovation framework with an idea-to-implementation process that has generated over 800 employee ideas, prioritized by user personas rather than central leadership. Kota emphasizes the importance of AI fluency, the CIO-CHRO partnership for cultural transformation, and using an open architecture approach that favors augmentation and vendor flexibility over custom builds in this rapidly evolving AI landscape.