Winter is a time for holiday gatherings, family getaways, snow-filled activities and savoring the season’s best moments. But while employees take well-deserved time off to enjoy the season and all its glory, employers are often left juggling an influx of time-off requests, scheduling headaches, seasonal hiring needs and more. Luckily, help is within reach. By leveraging UKG Ready, our human capital management (HCM) solution, you can navigate holiday-related challenges with confidence and ease. Let’s dive into three common seasonal challenges and discuss how UKG Ready can help.
Challenge #1: Employees take off a lot over the holidays
While an uptick in out-of-office replies is expected during the winter months, managing the behind-the-scenes logistics of employee time off can be anything but simple. From reviewing and approving vacation requests to tracking time-off balances and enforcing time and labor policies, employers have their hands full. Fortunately, UKG Ready provides the tools needed to streamline these responsibilities and keep operations running smoothly — even when it feels like half your team is at the slopes.
Streamlined time-off requests and approvals
With UKG Ready, employees can quickly and intuitively submit time-off requests from the convenience of their computer or mobile device. Once submitted, approving managers (or their backups) are notified and can quickly review the request and check for scheduling or policy conflicts before approving or rejecting it. The employee is then automatically notified of the decision, and any approved time is tracked and deducted from their balance.
Robust accruals tracking
Employees aren’t always given a lump sum of paid time off (PTO), vacation or sick days for the year. They accrue these days over time or based on eligibility factors like tenure or position. To ensure accrual balances are calculated properly, UKG Ready allows you to set rules defining how the system tracks and accrues employee time off. For example, let’s say vacation days don’t carry over at your organization. Or, employees need to work a certain number of hours or days to accrue a day of vacation. You can specify all of this (and more) within the system to ensure employees aren’t taking more days off than permitted.
Easy accrual donations
Emergencies happen, but not everyone has extra vacation days set aside for the unexpected — especially at the end of the year and during the busy holiday season. Accrual donation programs allow employees to donate their earned time off to coworkers who are out of PTO but need it for a medical emergency, family crisis or other qualified event. Within UKG Ready, employees can donate time directly to a colleague or to a company-wide bank of shared time off. To support responsible giving and ensure no one donates time they don’t have, the system even lets you set donation limits based on month or year, pay period or the donor’s current balance.
Strategic blocked days
Wintertime is peak season for many employers. If that’s the case for your organization, you may require employees to work certain days or want to prevent too many people from taking off on the same day. With UKG Ready, you can “block” specific dates in the system to prevent employees from requesting those days off. Still, there’s some flexibility. If an employee attempts to request off on a blocked day, the system can notify them that it’s a required workday. They can still submit the request with an optional note, which is then routed to the approving manager.
Robust pay calculations
We all know that an employee’s paycheck is only as accurate as your timekeeping practices allow. We also know that timekeeping gets tricky, fast. Take holiday pay, for example. If an employee needs to work the day before and after a holiday to qualify for higher pay, you need to be able to easily track who’s meeting the requirements. UKG Ready helps by allowing you to specify complex pay calculation rules. With set rules in place, the system checks whether requirements are met and applies the appropriate rate where eligible. The same approach works for overtime, shift differentials and other dynamic pay scenarios.
Challenge #2: Scheduling employees becomes more difficult
Managing employee time-off is hard enough with the holidays, but so is building schedules when staff availability is limited by vacations and other seasonal obligations. UKG Ready is the scheduling sidekick you never knew you needed, offering capabilities that simplify the often daunting task of creating fair and effective schedules for your employees.
Self-service shift swap and coverage requests
UKG Ready offers a variety of Employee Self-Service (ESS) tools, including the ability for employees to trade shifts with eligible coworkers. Both managers and employees can also request coverage for open shifts, allowing qualified team members to pick up work as needed. This functionality makes it easier to manage schedule changes and reduces the workload on both employees and supervisors when staffing adjustments inevitably arise.
Visibility into employee availability and preferences
Supporting employee preferences is key to a successful retention strategy. With UKG Ready, employees can set their availability and preferred work times in the system. For example, if an employee is available on Mondays but prefers the early shift, they can indicate that in the system. You can then use this information to create schedules that align with both business needs and employee preferences — a win for everyone.
A holistic multi-schedule view
Creating a balanced schedule is tough without full visibility into employee availability, especially when someone holds multiple roles within your organization. UKG Ready lets you view and manage multiple schedules at once, giving you a comprehensive view that helps prevent errors, overscheduling and double booking.
Challenge #3: Managing seasonal hiring needs is time-consuming
Bringing on seasonal staff can strain your time and resources. UKG Ready helps lighten the load by streamlining recruitment and onboarding, accelerating time to hire and improving cost-efficiency. Even better, it supports a positive applicant experience from the moment someone views your job posting. Here are a few key capabilities that make it possible:
Branded career portals
UKG Ready allows you to create branded career portals that look and feel like they are part of your website. Complete with a company logo, customizable header image, brand colors and more, these career portals provide applicants with an on-brand and cohesive experience. Depending on your needs, you can even create multiple career portals, allowing different departments or brands within your organization to have their own space.
Quick application process
Applying for a job should be simple and seamless. With UKG Ready, candidates can apply for open positions from any device without needing to set up an account. Employers can customize the application to collect only the most essential information, while features like resume parsing help applicants populate information quickly and efficiently.
Job board integrations
UKG Ready integrates with two job boards, Indeed and eQuest, to make it easy for you to promote your open positions. Rather than manually posting to job board after job board, you can send your position details directly from UKG Ready to Indeed or eQuest in required formats. No reformatting or manual uploading required. There are also perks to these two integrations specifically. Indeed allows applicants to apply using their Indeed Resume, which many candidates find quick and easy. Also, eQuest is an excellent way to expand your reach to a high volume of job boards available through the large eQuest network.
Electronic offer letters
With UKG Ready, you can easily create and send offer letters to candidates electronically. This Offer Letters feature includes a customizable HTML text editor and predefined system tags that automatically populate key account and system data. Offer letters can be distributed at any point during the recruitment process and signed by candidates using various methods. And the kicker? You can track and manage the entire process directly within the UKG Ready platform.
Onboarding checklists
UKG Ready’s onboarding checklists let employees know step-by-step exactly what they need to do, whether that includes filling out an I-9 form, completing a training course, meeting with department heads or another task. These checklists live right inside the system and are accessible via a handy in-system onboarding dashboard that contains everything an employee needs for a successful onboarding process.
Take ‘ready’ to a whole new level
Whether you're navigating time-off surges, juggling schedules or bringing on new employees, UKG Ready can help you calm the winter holiday chaos. That said, the power of UKG Ready doesn’t start or end with any given season or challenge. UKG Ready is a full-suite human capital management (HCM) technology that leverages Payroll, Time & Labor, Human Resources and Talent Management solutions to address every stage of the employee lifecycle — from hire to retire.
To learn more about how UKG Ready and our B2E Solutions team can help you address your unique business challenges, request a demo today.
Editor's Note: This blog was originally published June 30, 2025, and is updated seasonally to reflect new information and seasonal tips.
