Workforce Central 7: Kronos Makes Workforce Management Easier Than Ever

CHELMSFORD, Mass., June 17, 2013 – Kronos Incorporated, the global leader in delivering workforce management solutions in the cloud, today unveiled , a groundbreaking release designed to make workforce management easier than ever. Already recognized as the industry’s most intuitive workforce management solution, Workforce Central 7 expands on the unrivaled Kronos user experience with hundreds of enhancements to further simplify the day-to-day lives of managers and employees.

Managing in the moment made easier

Today’s workforce demands a system that delivers key workforce information whenever and wherever it’s needed. Workforce Central 7 makes this possible through its innovative approach to managing in the moment.  Highlights include:

• Intelligent, suite-wide search capabilities that instantly direct managers to the people, schedules, exceptions, skills, and certifications that they are looking for
• More than 50 new priority-based alerts that deliver real-time notifications to multiple devices with one-click navigation to actionable content
• Expanded employee alerts to keep employees informed and free them from contacting their manager with routine questions
• Enhanced staffing capabilities that make it easier to transfer employees between locations, departments, units, or stores with a single click
• A new “pinning” feature that enables managers to select and prioritize only the locations they deem most important
• Schedule changes and postings, accrual balance updates, vacation approvals, and timecard status changes can now be instantly delivered to the employee’s device of choice be it smartphone, desktop, or Kronos InTouch^® time clock
• Enterprise-wide single sign-on and stronger security for Workforce Mobile make the industry-leading solution even more effective and easier to use
• Richer contextual navigation across the suite makes finding what you need easier and faster

Scheduling made easier

Best-of-breed scheduling solutions from Kronos have been made even easier to use through a host of customer-driven enhancements, including:

• Configurable schedule views that make it easier for managers to display more employees simultaneously and make faster staffing decisions
• Unique user interface improvements that support enhanced scrolling, panning, and collapsing of schedule data based on individual preferences
• A new calendar view that employees can use to enter their availability and shift preferences
• Improved shift-swapping workflows that require less manager involvement and increase employee flexibility
• Shift requests can be initiated from a new calendar view and directed to only those employees who meet the eligibility requirements
• A new schedule-to-skill feature that makes it easier than ever to ensure that each job is covered with the right employee skill mix based on anticipated labor demand
• The ability to track and consider proficiency levels when planning for the right staffing mix
• Even faster, easier, and more precise individual store budgeting and planning
• “Smart operations” enables managers to create multiple locations by copying or moving existing locations – along with the associated configuration rules and option sets – from the organizational and forecast maps
• “Quick actions” in the scheduling widget allows users to rapidly edit and update schedules

Labor costing made easier

Workforce Central 7 delivers a host of enhancements to help organizations control their labor costs in the face of shrinking budgets and global competition:

• New labor views make it easier to understand the status of every grant, project, or work order that is underway within an organization
• An enhanced activity view with drill-down and roll-up capabilities provides incredible insight into the status and cost of various work activities
• New activity queries help employees quickly identify projects, grants, and activities that are relevant to their workday and easily allocate worked time to these projects via their timecard
• Employers that elect to have their staff work on multiple jobs/assignments with different supervisors can now require each supervisor to sign off on the employee’s hours for greater accountability and more accurate job costing
• Employees can be assigned a quick pick list of departments they can make transfers to,  making it simple and easy to allocate worked time to the appropriate department
• A new version of the Project View Timecard allows users to customize their layout in a variety of ways including pre-populating commonly used pay codes to make time entry quick and easy;
• Workforce Analytics^™ now includes a core dashboard and pre-defined reports that can be modified and easily configured to meet a customer’s specific needs
• New metrics and key performance indicators help customers transform timekeeping data into strategic insight that can be used to improve performance and results with visibility to performance against targets, as well as the projected outcomes for labor hours and labor costs

Global deployments made easier

Successfully deployed in more than 100 countries, Workforce Central is the gold standard for multi-nationals who require a centralized workforce management system for managing their operations around the globe. Workforce Central 7 further builds on this success by introducing:

• Three new standard languages including Italian, Korean, and Polish
• A host of functionality for Brazil and France, two countries that have some of the world’s most complex labor practices
• Additional pay rules for contract-based employees
• New labor rule extensions to accommodate region-specific overtime laws in several countries including China
• Enhanced password security
• Full- or half-day time-off requests that are essential to ensure appropriate staffing levels in geographies that manage labor in days versus hours

Affordable Care Act made easier

As organizations prepare to implement compliance strategies for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), they need to optimize their full-time/part-time mix, gain insight to their ACA “look-back” period, and continually monitor their full- and part-time status, Kronos has introduced a wide variety of capabilities designed to make compliance with the act easy and painless.

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For more information about Workforce Central 7, or to request a free consultation or product demo, please call 1-800-348-5545 or fill out our contact form.