Kronos Predicts Top Trends in Public Sector Workforce Management for 2014

CHELMSFORD, Mass., Jan. 20, 2013 – Serving more than three million public sector employees  across federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as  K-12 and higher education institutions, Kronos Incorporated today announced the top trends and issues that will impact the public sector workforce in 2014. Videos related to these trends are also available.

Top Trends for 2014

• Open Data Governance – Citizen engagement is a growing theme in the public sector and this is driving the concept of open data, creating an environment of “open government”. In several cities, residents are already taking an active role in improving the community. For example, one leading city government is piloting a mobile application that collects road condition data as residents commute. The expectation that the public sector workforce will partner with citizens to bring solutions to real problems will grow in 2014.
• Healthcare Reform Readiness – Recent Kronos surveys¹ show that 84 percent of government agencies and 82 percent of educational institutions are either not prepared at all or somewhat prepared for the upcoming Affordable Care Act (ACA) reporting requirements. Even though the federal government issued a one-year delay related to the “shared responsibilities” requirements, it is still imperative that government agencies and educational institutions use this extra time to take a more strategic and thoughtful approach to how they will manage the changes associated with the ACA.
• Engage a Multi-Generational Workforce – A significant portion of the public sector workforce will approach retirement age over the next few years. This dynamic heightens the urgency of knowledge transfer and effective management of multiple generations of employees including boomers, Generation X-ers, and millennials.
• To address these issues, workforce management will need to be simplified in 2014 – Currently, government agencies and educational institutions are collecting more labor data than ever before, but this information is trapped in disparate systems and silos. Workforce analytics applications will need to be implemented so costly errors are preempted, citizen engagement is optimized, and labor utilization is reported back to the funding source. Also, moving workforce management applications and data to the cloud will remain front and center in 2014 to improve reliability and reduce costs. And mobile applications will continue to transform the way the public sector workforce operates by accessing timely information leveraging the devices they use in their daily, personal lives.

Read more…