Prakash Kota, chief information officer of US-based human-resources software group UKG, told reporters that the firm's recent rollout of hundreds of artificial-intelligence applications signals a new era for HR technology. Within his first year, UKG has launched 387 internal AI tools and created more than 12,000 AI agents across platforms such as Microsoft, Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Why the AI push matters for HR
The surge in AI-driven automation is reshaping how companies manage talent, payroll and employee support. Consulting giant PwC notes that job ads mentioning AI are growing almost eight times faster than the overall employment market, highlighting a rising demand for AI-savvy workers. At the same time, a McKinsey study of roughly 1,300 HR leaders across ten countries found that only 11% have a strategic workforce plan extending beyond three years, underscoring uncertainty about future skill needs.
For UKG, the stakes are concrete. The company now uses AI-enabled voice and chat agents for customer service, with an estimated 27% of calls handled autonomously. These agents also draft follow-up materials, freeing human staff to focus on higher-value tasks such as upselling UKG's suite of products. According to Kota, the AI system has generated around 300 internal case studies that capture newly learned problem-solving approaches, feeding both the AI and human teams.
What UKG has done so far
After a two-decade stint at Autodesk, Kota joined UKG in April 2025 and immediately tackled lingering IT integration work from the 2020 merger of Kronos and Ultimate Software that created the firm. Within 90 days he centralised the technology function, and six months later the company consolidated its enterprise-resource-planning and customer-relationship-management platforms onto Microsoft and Salesforce respectively. Multiple data warehouses were merged, creating a unified foundation for AI development.
UKG has made ChatGPT Enterprise and Google Gemini Enterprise available to all 14,000 employees, while its product and engineering teams also experiment with Anthropic's Claude Code tool. Kota prefers short-term contracts, arguing that the pace of AI evolution makes long-term commitments risky.
"In the AI era, everyone is talking about how work will be reshaped; how do employees and workers coexist?" Kota said.
He adds that AI has added roughly 8,500 productive hours each month, a figure the company tracks alongside metrics such as feature adoption, customer-sentiment scores and upsell rates.
What comes next for UKG and European HR
Kota says the next challenge is helping senior leaders balance three pillars, talent, tools and tokens, a framework the C-suite refers to as "T3". The idea is to allocate spending across hiring AI-skilled staff, procuring the right platforms and incentivising responsible AI use. He cautions against a one-size-fits-all token budget, urging flexibility as organisations learn what works.
For European firms, UKG's experience offers a template: consolidate legacy systems, provide enterprise-grade AI tools to staff, and measure impact in concrete productivity terms. As AI adoption accelerates, HR departments will need longer-term workforce plans and clearer upskilling pathways to keep pace with the technology.
UKG continues to expand its AI ecosystem, and Kota expects the company to double the number of internal AI agents by the end of next year, further embedding AI into everyday HR processes across its global client base.