New Survey Reveals Impact of Decentralized Staffing, Personnel, and Payroll Data on Public Safety

CHELMSFORD, Mass., March 11, 2013 — A new public safety survey titled “Scheduling Integration: How Will You Leverage Existing Technology” commissioned by Kronos Incorporated and conducted by The Praetorian Group reveals that a majority of public safety agencies still rely on paper or spreadsheet templates for first responder scheduling and other workforce management tasks. These outdated tools negatively impact agencies in two areas: lack of centralized staffing, personnel, payroll, and reporting data; and the inability of the agencies to share this critical data with complementary solutions such as computer aided dispatch (CAD), records management systems (RMS), payroll, HR, and time and attendance.

News Facts

• “Scheduling Integration: How Will You Leverage Existing Technology” surveyed public safety professionals employed in supervisory positions such as chief, lieutenant, captain, and sergeant, as well as in roles of officer, EMT, firefighter, and corrections deputy. Agencies included were fire, EMS, police, corrections, and state and federal organizations. The survey explored the types of workforce management technology currently used in public safety and their role in operations as well as perceptions among public safety professionals about how such systems should integrate with other technology.
• More than 50 percent of respondents noted that they did not have any scheduling and resource management automation. Specifically, 38 percent said they use a manual spreadsheet such as Excel™ to create schedules and 14 percent stated that their employer still relies on pencil and paper.
• The survey also found lack of integration between scheduling or workforce management solutions and other key technologies as an overarching problem. And more than 60 percent of respondents agreed that better integration will save data entry time and reduce errors.
  • Public safety agencies rely on CAD systems for dispatching service calls and 65 percent of respondents noted that their agencies do not leverage integration between their scheduling and CAD systems. And 60 percent of respondents agreed that pre-loading roster and personnel information into the CAD system will save data entry time and reduce errors.
  • Nearly 60 percent of respondents indicated that their agencies do not have integration between their scheduling and RMS used for incident tracking, personnel records, training, and inventory. And 65 percent of respondents agreed that pre-loading roster data such as name, ID#, and unit will save data entry time and reduce errors.
  • 60 percent of respondents also reported that their agencies do not integrate scheduling and payroll systems. And more than 60 percent agreed that automatically importing payroll data from a scheduling system will reduce errors and eliminate data entry.
• Kronos TeleStaff^™, the public safety industry’s leading scheduling and notification solution, centralizes scheduling, roster, personnel, and payroll data. TeleStaff delivers an out-of-the-box set of parameters already defined and ready for export to CAD, RMS, payroll, and time and attendance systems to help agencies share data across the enterprise, eliminate redundant work processes, and reduce errors.

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