Kronos Inc. today announced Workforce Central 6.0, which company officials call a "significant new release" of the global workforce management software suite for manufacturers, retailers, and healthcare providers, among others.
Manufacturers in particular are struggling to compete under the intense pressure of globalization, increased compliance burdens, and rising labor costs. Savvy workforce management has become a way for manufacturers to differentiate themselves, according to Peter George, chief technology officer at Kronos, which was acquired for $1.8 billion in late March. Workforce Central 6.0, which will be available in June, gives manufacturers improved visibility into workforce performance — on an individual, geographic, shift, or job basis — via enhanced analytics capabilities.
"Workforce Central 6 transforms businesses by providing executives with greater visibility into their global workforce," George said in a statement.
Manufacturers need to carefully manage cost, and labor is a huge portion of that cost, said Lisa Rowan, program manager of HR and talent management services for IDC. "Ensuring people are paid properly with no mistakes is key. Careful timekeeping eliminates things like 'buddy punching' and shift creep," she said.
Workforce Central 6.0 can help manufacturers and other companies gain better understanding of employee absences and other problems, Rowan added, even when employees are distributed around the world. Enhanced local language support will also ease global workforce management, she said.
Other new features in the 6.0 release include:
- A centralized location for labor data, which enables managers to monitor and compare workforce performance across geographies.
- Industry-specific key performance indicators (KPIs), such as the Overall Labor Efficiency (OLE) KPI for manufacturing. OLE looks at workforce availability, performance, and quality factors to ensure that manufacturers are successfully balancing all three rather than focusing on a particular area at the expense of another.
- Enhanced scheduling automation features.
- An updated user interface for better navigation and ease of use by a variety of roles in the organization.
While most manufacturers consider their labor force a valuable asset, many have yet to quantify and understand the impact of the labor force on profitability, George said. Aside from time and attendance, most manufacturers do not have a method of measuring or understanding the effective use of their workforce. Workforce Central 6 is a major step toward making human capital decisions that are aligned with business objectives while remaining flexible. Manufacturers can easily alter the business rules by which Workforce Central 6 operates as market and workforce conditions change.
In shift-based environments, managers struggle to align labor with dynamic workloads, resulting in rising labor costs, excessive overtime, and lower customer satisfaction. Workforce Central 6 extends the suite's scheduling capabilities to address these issues. The scheduling engines in Workforce Central 6 consider business constraints while automatically generating schedules that accommodate specialized skill sets and employee preferences. This allows managers to balance qualifications, coverage needs, and costs to achieve optimized performance at the lowest expense. The advanced scheduling technology also makes it possible to manage compliance with policies, regulations, and union agreements, which is especially suited to the manufacturing environment.
Rowan noted that large manufacturers with global operations would benefit from using software like Kronos Workforce Central. "Labor is a huge component of manufacturing cost, so tools to help control cost definitely give an advantage," she said.