7 Things Worth Getting Right Before Your UKG Pro WFM Implementation Kicks Off
Having the right players in the right seats and knowing where to extend your bench is critical in any UKG Pro Workforce Management implementation. After working alongside health systems through every phase of UKG Pro Workforce Management from initial scoping through post-go-live optimization, patterns emerge. The implementations that go well are well planned and resourced.
[A note on naming: UKG Pro Workforce Management is the current product name for what was previously known as UKG Dimensions and UKG Workforce Dimensions. If your team is still searching under those earlier names, you’re looking at the same platform.]
Ask any team what they would do differently, and the answers cluster around the same theme: not the technology, not the implementation partner, rather the decisions the client organization made before the project kicked off, and the discipline they maintained while it was underway. Who was assigned too late. What governance was assumed rather than built. Where gaps were spotted but not addressed.
No two health systems look the same. A community hospital and a large academic medical center will approach these projects very differently. For example, different team sizes, different role combinations, different levels of internal bandwidth. The principles below apply regardless of size or complexity. What scales is how you apply them.
Successful implementations don’t require a massive internal team assembled from scratch. They require clarity about what your organization needs to own, who carries it, and where a practice partner can extend your capacity so your internal people stay focused on what only they can do.
1. Build Governance That Keeps Your UKG Pro WFM Implementation Moving
Every implementation that goes well has two things in place on the client side: a WFM Program Leader who owns the day-to-day, and a Steering Committee that keeps the project moving at the organizational level.
The Program Leader is the single point of accountability managing the relationship with the implementation partner, driving cross-functional decisions, and serving as the connective tissue between workstreams. The role requires organizational credibility, decision-making authority, and enough protected capacity to lead.
The Steering Committee is what makes the hard calls possible. When competing priorities collide, resources need to be reallocated, or a decision requires executive alignment, this is the mechanism that keeps momentum from stalling. Health systems that establish this structure early and hold to a consistent meeting cadence resolve issues in days rather than weeks. The ones that don’t find themselves revisiting the same decisions repeatedly.
2. Protect Your Subject Matter Experts’ Time and Backfill When You Have To
Your functional Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are the people who know how work happens in your organization: your pay rules, your scheduling patterns, your union agreements, your leave policies. Getting that knowledge into the system correctly is the foundation of a successful implementation, and no outside party can supply it.
This doesn’t mean pulling every operational expert away from their day job for the duration of the project. It means creating the conditions for them to participate. Your people need to be on this project learning the platform, shaping how it’s configured, and coming out the other side owning it.
That only happens if someone covers their operational responsibilities while they do. Backfilling key roles during the project isn’t a luxury. It’s often the difference between SMEs who are genuinely engaged and ones who are physically present but mentally somewhere else. The investment pays for itself in go-live readiness and long-term system ownership.
3. Clarify Integration Ownership Early and Staff Accordingly
UKG Pro WFM needs to exchange data with your HRIS, payroll engine, EHR, financial systems and more. One thing worth clarifying upfront: all UKG implementation partners are required to deploy certified resources who build the client-side interfaces. What varies is the depth of knowledge a partner brings to the systems on the other end of those integrations.
Partners who already know the EHR and ERP platforms common in healthcare environments Epic, Oracle Health, Workday, Infor and others bring a meaningful advantage. When an integration issue surfaces, you want someone who understands how data flows on both sides. Asking your implementation partner directly about their experience with your specific environment before the integration workstream begins is a conversation worth having early.
4. Build a Testing Team That Includes People Who Weren’t in Every Design Session
Testing is where a UKG Pro WFM implementation either proves out or reveals its gaps. In healthcare, the stakes are real: a misconfigured pay rule can mean incorrect paychecks for hundreds of employees, compliance exposure, and union grievances.
Organizations that catch issues before go-live treat testing as a dedicated workstream with its own resources. Critically, they include people who weren’t in every configuration session testers who can catch what the design team has learned to overlook. Options for supplementing internal testing capacity range from embedded QA resources to automated testing platforms built for complex healthcare pay rule and scheduling scenarios.
You don’t need to build a full testing function from scratch. You need the right coverage at the right moments.
5. Start UKG Pro WFM Change Management at Kickoff, Not Two Months Before Go-Live
A WFM implementation changes how every employee in your organization interacts with time, scheduling and leave. A technically successful go-live can still operationally struggle for months if the people affected weren’t prepared for what changed.
The organizations that navigate this well assign a dedicated Change Management Lead at the start of the project and build a network of department-level change champions early. This role owns stakeholder communications, runs impact assessments, identifies resistance before it surfaces as adoption problems, and coordinates training strategy from day one.
For many health systems, dedicated change management expertise doesn’t exist internally or is already tied to other initiatives. A practice partner with end-to-end OCM capability can carry this workstream while your internal team stays focused on operations. Either way, the worst outcome is assuming someone will pick it up as the project progresses. By then, it’s already too late.
6. Think About the Post-Go-Live Team Before You Go Live
Go-live is a milestone, not a finish line. The first 90 days after cutover are often the most operationally intensive period of the entire project. Issues surface in production that didn’t appear in testing. Users encounter scenarios the design didn’t anticipate. The system needs tuning.
What separates organizations that stabilize quickly from ones that struggle is straightforward: they’ve already designated who owns the system going forward before cutover happens. That means a WFM System Administrator, module-specific application analysts, an ongoing training coordinator, and a clear model for optimization and enhancement over time.
Whether that capability lives entirely in-house, is supported by a managed services arrangement, or some combination of both—the organizations that decide before go-live are in a much stronger position than the ones figuring it out afterward.
For a deeper look at what ongoing UKG Pro WFM optimization looks like after go-live, see 5 Ways to Optimize UKG Pro Workforce Management for Healthcare.
7. Be Honest About Your Gaps Early and Fill Them Intentionally
This is the most consistent differentiator. Organizations whose implementations go well are candid during planning about what they don’t have: the integration developer who’s already committed to another initiative, the change management capability that doesn’t really exist internally, the payroll SME who is also carrying three other projects.
Gaps identified during scoping are solvable. The same gaps discovered several months into the project can become crises. The most useful planning exercise a health system can do at the start of a WFM initiative is a clear-eyed, role-by-role look at what they genuinely own, what needs to be hired or backfilled, and what might be better handled by a practice partner with the specific experience to fill it.
That conversation should be honest and specific. It’s usually what separates a well-planned project from one that’s constantly catching up.
Ready to See the Full Resource Picture?
We built The Ultimate UKG Pro WFM Resource Planning & Staffing Guide to give health systems a practical map of what a well-resourced implementation looks like every client-side role, a phase-by-phase resource heat map, and guidance on where organizations most consistently need support.
To learn more about how Healthcare IT Leaders supports UKG Pro Workforce Management implementations from planning through post-go-live, contact us to speak with a consultant who has done this before.