Kronos Inc. today unveiled a major upgrade to its workforce management application suite that, among numerous enhancements, empower top managers to more effectively track and prevent employee absenteeism, schedule workforce shifts that meet business requirements and map labor requirements with worker availability and preferences. Workforce Central Release 5.1 is more than a mere "dot" release, according to the vendor, which claims it contains hundreds of functional and usability enhancements as well as new programs that extend Kronos' broad suite of human resources, payroll, scheduling and time and labor applications. Key to the upgrade are absence management applications that provide visibility into absence patterns as well as tools to record and track workforce absence, which in many shops is a manual process that requires access to a variety of systems, noted Clay Ritchey, Kronos' product marketing manager, in an interview.

Absenteeism is a major problem, according to Kronos, which conducted research and found that 15% of payroll is spent on employees who are not working -- be it scheduled but untracked time off or unscheduled time off with the employee's whereabouts unknown. Having automated polices to manage absenteeism consistently and fairly can help companies reclaim a small but significant portion of those losses and can create documentation necessary to discipline abusers, Ritchey noted. "On average, employees take three days per year ... that they are not entitled to," Ritchey said. "We're giving manufacturers the [automated] tools to reduce the amount of leave employees are taking that they are not entitled to" and prevent errors caused by manual tracking and calculation. The new release also can help companies comply with federal and state mandates, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), a 12-year-old law that requires employers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for qualified family reasons. These leaves can be taken in increments under an hour, making it difficult to track as well as prevent abuse and lost productivity. Release 5.1 offers policy creation and tracking tools that can "reduce the burden on HR and front line managers, who often have [FMLA] discussions and are not trained to do so," Ritchey pointed out. By analyzing absentee data, managers can not only reduce unscheduled leaves but are better informed on ways to deploy the workforce to meet employee lifestyle needs, as well as to more equitably distribute work and reduce workers' compensation claims, which can escalate when employees work overtime to fill in for missing workers, Ritchey said. Better scheduling can also help reduce absenteeism and turnover, but just as important, can enable manufacturers to align workforce availability with business demands. Manufacturers are beginning to approach workforce management as they manage their supply chain by examining demand signals and scheduling product shifts accordingly. Some companies, he said, are looking to "flex their workforce up and down the same way they manage ... both suppliers and materials." To enable this, 5.1 offers optimization tools to take work forecasts from an ERP system (Worforce Central is built on a J2EE-compliant, component-based architecture with open APIs to facilitate Web services) and schedule workloads based on numerous parameters. Manufacturers can use constraint-based tools that rely on company-defined rules and employee preferences to create schedules that can be fine-tuned daily and optimized by workload, as well as personnel availability, skills and seniority, Ritchey said. "[Scheduling] flexibility creates a happier and more engaged workforce," he noted. "Before none of their preferences were met, [with 5.1] 80% can be met." Kronos 5.1 will also be delivered on a self-service kiosk built from the same biometrics-based terminals that employees use to punch in and track labor tasks. The kiosk will enable employees to track their hours, vacation accruals, leave policies and sign up for optimal work shifts within the scheduling system, Ritchey said. They can also receive special, secure Kronos e-mail. Many manufacturers don't have space or the means to manage a stand-alone PC on a shop floor and then police usage. Therefore, Ritchey foresee manufacturers placing self-service kiosks in break rooms but limiting usage to special times (when employees are taking a break or have completed their shifts). To ensure privacy, employees would have to swipe their badges and use the biometric fingerprint reader to gain access to their records and approved applications, he added. Judy Sweeney, who follows the human capital management arena for AMR Research (Boston) said the new release is indicative of the attention Kronos has paid to analytics, visual presentation (i.e., the way managers look at the workforce) and scalability across the enterprise. It also shows the progress made in integrating scheduling capabilities acquired in last fall when Kronos bought AD OPT Technologies of Montreal, though more work needs to be done. Ritchey readily acknowledged this, noting that while Kronos has already completed integration at the database level and over time will bring more of AD OPT's scheduling functionality into Workforce Central. "You can expect this within the next release or two," he noted. Nevertheless, Sweeney is pleased by Workforce Central's growing maturity. Emblematic of this are the visualization tools that enable managers to more easily spot absentee trends rather than pouring through standard alpha-numeric reports. "They have all pieces for strong workforce management, attendance reporting and decision making suite," she said. "They now have brought in a complex scheduling piece which creates an ever stronger product." This will be critical to fend off Germany's Kaba Benzing, which closely rides SAP AG's coattails, smaller, manufacturing-industry focused competitors such as SmartTime, and supply chain execution vendors such as Manhattan Associates and Red Prairie, which are eyeballing the workforce management space as an extension to their existing software suites. Most of the enhancements in Workforce Central 5.1 are free to customers who have a maintenance contract. The absence management software, which includes two applications -- Workforce Leave and Workforce Attendance -- can be purchased together or separately. Pricing is based on the numbers of employees within an organization and implementation scope, a Kronos spokeswoman said.