Kronos® Enables Global Workforce Optimization with Launch of Workforce Central® 6

Integrated suite of solutions creates standards for measuring workforce performance

CHELMSFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Globalization, an aging population, rising labor costs, fierce competition, and compliance concerns are stay-awake issues for executives. As organizations struggle to compete, their workforce becomes increasingly critical as a means to differentiate themselves, drive profitability, and overcome these critical business challenges. With version 6 of the Workforce Central^® suite from Kronos^® Incorporated (Nasdaq: KRON), organizations have the insight and information required to manage performance and effectively optimize a global workforce. Workforce Central 6 is slated for general availability in June.

“As a result, our employees will have additional time to focus on providing quality care to our patients.”

“With remote, international, and contingent employees, managing today’s diverse workforce has never been so complex. Aligning talent with the needs of the business is like walking on a tight rope; you want to strike a healthy balance while maintaining a clear focus on your ultimate objective,” said Peter George, chief technology officer at Kronos. “Workforce Central 6 transforms businesses by providing executives with greater visibility into their global workforce, enabling them to identify critical business issues and empowering them with the tools to make good informed decisions enroute to achieving their ultimate business goals.”

Creating standards for managing a global workforce

Today’s workforce is 24/7 and located across the globe. Executives are challenged to consistently have their finger on the pulse of workforce performance. Workforce Central 6 provides organizations with a centralized location for their labor data, enabling them to monitor and compare workforce performance across geographies. As a result, executives have access to standardized workforce performance information and reports right at their fingertips. The increased visibility into the workforce provides executives with greater clarity and a fresh perspective on their labor resources. For example, manufacturers can measure the contribution of labor to productivity; retailers can identify their most efficient locations; and healthcare providers can still deliver quality care despite shrinking budgets.

“Our global presence spans 19 different countries each with its own applications and reporting systems. Without one consistent reporting tool, managing our global workforce is extremely complex and challenging,” said Janine Bogrand, IT manager at Dresser Rand. “Workforce Central 6 will enable us to implement best practices in global workforce management. The new solution will streamline our reporting activity with one system to manage all employees across the globe.”

Improving visibility into workforce performance

Workforce Central 6 improves visibility into workforce performance by offering enhanced analytics. The intuitive tools compile labor performance and other business metrics, enabling users to assess workforce performance by employee, geography, shift, job, and other dimensions. In addition, Kronos applied its expertise in healthcare, manufacturing, and retail operations to help organizations identify and address their industry-specific problems.

For example, Kronos collaborated with leading manufacturing organizations to develop a new key performance indicator (KPI) that allows manufacturers to measure the effectiveness of their workforce. This new KPI, Overall Labor Effectiveness^™ (OLE), measures the utilization, performance, and quality of the workforce and its impact on productive output. Similar to Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), OLE is based on workforce availability, performance, and quality to ensure that manufacturers are able to balance all three of these areas rather than focusing on a particular area at the expense of another.

Surprisingly, while most manufacturers consider their labor force a most valuable asset, many have yet to quantify and understand the impact of the labor force on profitability. Today, beyond time and attendance most manufacturers do not have a method of measuring or understanding the effective use of their workforce,” said Dave Caruso, principal at David Caruso and Associates, Inc. “OLE is the next frontier in management standards that will help manufacturers achieve operational excellence through their workforce.”

Ensuring the right person is at the right place at the right time

Workforce Central 6 builds upon Kronos’ expertise and award-winning scheduling capabilities. The solution adds new scheduling automation features for manufacturers as well as an enhanced schedule assistant with a call-list feature for hospital staffing managers. In shift-based environments, managers struggle to align labor with dynamic workloads, resulting in rising labor costs, excessive overtime expenses, and diminished customer satisfaction. The powerful 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.

Early reviews of new capabilities in Workforce Central 6 indicate that the solution will deliver significant benefit to implementing organizations. “The enhanced scheduling solution available in Workforce Central 6 will decrease the amount of time our employees spend on scheduling and planning staff resources,” said Adam Dimm, nursing informatics coordinator from Pinnacle Health System. “As a result, our employees will have additional time to focus on providing quality care to our patients.”

Intuitive user interface

Good decision making depends on complete, timely, and accurate information. Workforce Central 6 is designed for use by the entire workforce. It offers a fresh, modern browser-based user interface, enabling easy navigation and use. New users have an instant comfort level with the solution, which minimizes training costs and enhances productivity, while existing users will find the familiar powerful capabilities of Workforce Central all the more easily accessible. As an additional user benefit, color schemes and other style settings can be tailored to adopt customer-specific branding. As a result, Workforce Central can seamlessly blend into existing customer computing environments, further minimizing training and speeding adoption.

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About Kronos Incorporated

Kronos Incorporated empowers organizations around the world to effectively manage their workforce. At Kronos, we are experts who are solely focused on delivering software and services that enable organizations to reduce costs, increase productivity, improve employee satisfaction, and ultimately enhance the level of service they provide. Kronos serves customers in more than 50 countries through its network of offices, subsidiaries, and distributors. Widely recognized as a market and thought leader in managing the workforce, Kronos has unrivaled reach with more than 30 million people using a Kronos solution every day. Learn more about Kronos at www.kronos.com.

© 2007 Kronos Incorporated. Kronos, Workforce Central, and the Kronos logo are registered trademarks of Kronos Incorporated or a related company. All other product and company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.