UKG, Lightcast Announce Strategic Partnership to Elevate Skills with AI

Great workplaces will benefit from an entirely new skills experience that empowers people with autonomy and self-discovery

LOWELL, Mass., & WESTON, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--UKG, a leading provider of HR, payroll, workforce management, and culture solutions for all people, today announced a strategic partnership with Lightcast, a global leader in labor market analytics, to accelerate the transformation of skills development and workforce planning through artificial intelligence (AI).

Lightcast delivers an industry-leading collection of skills data. When combined with UKG, which provides AI-powered experiences trained on the world’s largest collection of people data, work data, and culture data, organizations using UKG Pro will be able to offer their people a new AI-powered approach to reskilling, upskilling, and professional development. The partnership will help all employees — though especially those working in frontline positions — with the opportunity to explore and accelerate their own career paths based on current skills and future aspirations.

“AI enables organizations to build skills-based people strategies for every element of the employee experience,” said Josh Bersin, global industry analyst and CEO of The Josh Bersin Company. “UKG’s commitment to building great workplaces, working with Lightcast, a universal source of truth for global skills, promises a major step forward for companies who want to build skills-based strategies for recruiting, development, workforce management, and career development.”

By using UKG for skills, organizations will benefit from:

• UKG Bryte recommendations: Employees will receive personalized guidance on skills development, identifying suggested skills and trainings designed to unlock opportunities for pay differentials and promotions;
• A holistic view of workforce readiness: People managers and HR teams will have a comprehensive view of current workforce skills and future potential gaps to proactively support talent strategies; and
• A culture of continuous learning: Organizations will enhance employee development and retention, driving great workplace experiences and business success, by ensuring people are constantly learning and growing.

“A great place to work invests in their people to create a culture of belonging, growth, and innovation, which is why we’re empowering everyone with a data-led, skills-based approach to professional growth,” said Hugo Sarrazin, chief product and technology officer at UKG. “UKG is making the hard stuff simple, redefining how skills development happens in the workplace every day by using AI to guide, recommend, and provide insights that help individuals — and businesses — grow.”

“At Lightcast, our data-driven insights enable better, faster decisions to ensure organizations have the right combination of skills for current and future roles. We analyze workforces across global markets, offering a real-time look into the dynamic labor market and changing skills landscape,” said JP Moran, executive vice president of enterprise at Lightcast. “Backed by Lightcast and UKG, organizations will benefit from a more modern approach to hiring and developing essential skills and cultivating the talent and teams that they need both today and tomorrow.”

About UKG

At UKG, our purpose is people. We are on a mission to inspire every organization to become a great place to work through HCM technology built for all. More than 80,000 customers across all sizes, industries, and geographies trust UKG HR, payroll, workforce management, and culture cloud solutions to drive great workplace experiences and make better, more confident people and business decisions. With the world’s largest collection of people data, work data, and culture data combined with rich experience using artificial intelligence in the service of people, we connect culture insights with business outcomes to show what’s possible when organizations invest in their people. To learn more, visit ukg.com.

Copyright 2024 UKG Inc. All rights reserved. For a full list of UKG trademarks, please visit ukg.com/trademarks. All other trademarks, if any, are property of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change.

About Lightcast

Lightcast’s talent intelligence platform answers organizations’ most difficult workforce questions to drive meaningful business results. Starting with the innovation from the 20+ years as Emsi and Burning Glass, Lightcast accelerates the work, bringing together hundreds of billions of vetted, constantly updated data points and incredible insights to drive strategic talent decisions. Companies can tap into the deepest open repository of skills supply and demand data to transform their hunches into a skills-based future for their business. The flexible solution used by 400+ organizations and 67 of the Fortune 100 can integrate into a company’s own data, be guided by in-house talent experts, or can provide the tools and confidence to explore it independently.

Lightcast is active in over 30 countries and has offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, New Zealand, and India. The company is backed by global private equity leader KKR. For more, visit lighthcast.io.