KRONOS iSERIES CENTRAL SUITE
Scheduling Solutions Guide
Optimize Staff Schedules and Productivity
GAIN A COMPETITIVE EDGE
with Automated Labor Scheduling
Every industry faces changes in business demand and work volume. The ability to meet these constant fl uctuations with appropriate staffi ng levels is crucial to achieving strong bottom-line results. However, the challenges behind allocating labor resources based on highly variable workload demands are numerous and usually cannot be addressed by ineffi cient scheduling processes.
Obstacles faced by organizations include excessive overtime costs in one area while qualifi ed employees in other departments remain underutilized. Others find themselves exposed to compliance-related risks, by scheduling unqualifi ed employees for skilled positions, which can cause costly lawsuits and grievances arising from inconsistent scheduling practices. Meanwhile, absenteeism and unexpected changes in demand can further increase an organization’s labor costs related to overtime usage and unproductive hours.
The responsibility for these challenges falls on the managers who struggle every day to plan staff coverage by relying on manual, paper-based systems for scheduling. Using automated solutions not only creates a more effective scheduling process, it also frees managers to spend more time on more mission-critical business activities. That’s where Kronos’ scheduling solution enters the picture.
KRONOS’ ADVANCED SCHEDULING
Solution for the IBM iSeries Server
Kronos iSeries Scheduler centralizes information about your workforce and business to enable you to optimize labor scheduling. Empowering managers to make better-informed, proactive scheduling decisions that align your workforce with business demands, Kronos iSeries Scheduler eases administrative burdens, minimizes labor costs, and ultimately improves your organization’s performance.
Our advanced scheduling solution combines powerful visibility and control across the entire workforce with robust, intuitive tools that help managers create the best possible schedules. Kronos iSeries Scheduler automates time-consuming scheduling tasks and displays the exact information managers need — including staffi ng requirements, employee skills, availability, and hours worked — to easily make swift decisions that cost-effectively place the right people in the right place at the right time.
Fully integrated with Kronos’ time and labor solutions, Kronos iSeries Scheduler centralizes information related to your workforce and business needs to provide a comprehensive view of your labor resources and staffi ng requirements. This helps maximize labor utilization across your entire organization.
Advantages of Kronos iSeries Scheduler include:
REDUCED reliance on overtime and contract labor INCREASED productivity, effi ciency, and performance DECREASED lead times — reduced downtime and delays BALANCED needs of customers, employees, and your business
EMPOWER YOUR MANAGERS
with Comprehensive Scheduling
Kronos iSeries Scheduler empowers your managers to maximize the use of your organization’s most valuable asset — your workforce. Our solution helps you do this with clear visibility over available employee resources and skills throughout your organization, helping you balance business concerns related to labor costs, compliance, employee satisfaction, productivity, and your bottom line.
Giving managers real-time access to essential decision-making information — using web-based tools right at their desktops — allows them to make cost-effective scheduling decisions that take into account government mandates, labor contracts, and organizational policies. Consistently applying pay and work rules also helps boost employee satisfaction, productivity, and overall performance.
The benefi ts of Kronos iSeries Scheduler include:
Greater control over labor costs
Kronos iSeries Scheduler provides clear views of qualifi ed employees — specifi cally, employees who have the necessary skills and availability to fi ll open shifts. The solution also tracks hours worked for every employee in real time, helping you control overtime costs by making the most use of your available labor resources. This enables managers to distribute hours economically across the entire workforce, limiting reliance on overtime and expensive agency labor.
Reduced risks of noncompliance
Kronos iSeries Scheduler reduces the administrative burdens of managing policies, rules, and regulations when building schedules. The solution can be confi gured using scheduling rules that automatically track employee qualifi cations, certifi cations, and seniority so managers can monitor labor compliance while deter- mining workload requirements. It also tracks compliance with government mandates and union rules to help reduce the risk of legal liabilities, grievances, and disputes.
Higher employee satisfaction
Kronos iSeries Scheduler helps managers ensure fair and equitable schedules that balance the needs of employees with those of your business.
For example, managers who need to schedule by seniority or skill level can easily access this information — along with employee availability and worked hours — to create cost-effective schedules using best-fi t employees. In addition, all employees appreciate having input into their availability, preferences, and schedules.
Bottom-line results
Kronos iSeries Scheduler provides bottom-line results, by enabling managers to spend less time mired in ineffi cient administrative tasks and more time improving employee performance, customer service, produc- tion effi ciency, and other key metrics. Your managers have the tools they need to create optimal schedules, by placing the best employees in the right place, at the right time, and at the lowest cost. Your organization can also realize substantial benefi ts from integrating Kronos iSeries Scheduler with other business systems, including back-offi ce ERP, payroll, and human resources applications.
KRONOS iSERIES SCHEDULER
View and Control Labor Resources
What makes Kronos iSeries Scheduler different from other scheduling solutions? Without it, your managers lack the insight into your workforce that would enable them to make the most effi cient, cost-effective use of your labor resources. Kronos iSeries Scheduler provides greater visibility and control of labor information, allowing your managers to make better scheduling decisions that maximize employee utilization.
Kronos iSeries Scheduler consists of three robust applications:
Workload Planner: Address work requirements with greater clarity
The Workload Planner helps managers determine their scheduling coverage needs. It provides a view of scheduling data that tracks the details of each required position, including where the job needs to be performed, what skills are required, how many positions are needed, and when the work needs to be completed. This allows managers to view, access, and manage staff coverage based on workload.
Schedule Planner: Create a schedule from any angle
At the heart of Kronos iSeries Scheduler is the Schedule Planner, a powerful tool that enables frontline managers to consistently create effi cient, fair, and cost-effective schedules. Managers can create schedules in views anchored by employee, position, or shift, such as matching employees to jobs or jobs to employees — whatever is easiest and most effective for a given scheduling task.
Schedule Assistant: One-click productivity
With the Schedule Assistant — a tool within the Schedule Planner that automates the manager’s most time- consuming administrative tasks in schedule planning — managers can fi nd the optimal resource in a fraction of the time, eliminating the use of manual, paper-based tasks and schedules.
Through shift-based scheduling, the Schedule Assistant can also help managers fi ll problematic shifts.
It guides managers to the optimal schedule by ranking employees according to cost, compliance, and availability. This helps managers make the most equitable and cost-effective choices, even when a complex scheduling decision must be made on the fl y. Meanwhile, automated rules help ensure that schedules man- agers create are equitable and adhere to government mandates, corporate policies, and labor agreements.
The Kronos iSeries Scheduler difference:
Decentralized scheduling — Reduce administrative burdens and standardize scheduling by involving everyone in the process.
Simplifi ed access to information — Easy-to-use software and insightful data empower managers to create cost-effective schedules.
Improved employee satisfaction — Web-enabled application gives everyone access to and control of their scheduling information.
Enhanced visibility and control — Clear views of available labor resources across your organization can help you control labor costs.
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AN INTEGRATED COMPONENT
of the Kronos iSeries Central Suite
One of Kronos iSeries Scheduler’s most powerful benefi ts is its seamless integration with time and labor applications in the Kronos iSeries Central suite — providing a host of synergistic benefi ts. And the tight integration between Kronos iSeries Scheduler and Kronos’ time and labor solutions keeps planned schedules and actual time and attendance data in sync, allowing managers to make better, more proactive scheduling decisions.
Because the information in Kronos iSeries Scheduler remains in sync, managers can factor the number of hours worked for each employee, as well as employees who are approaching overtime or scheduled for time off, further contributing to cost-effective scheduling. And because employee information — certifi cations, seniority, and leave balances — is updated and shared in real time, managers can consider compliance issues during scheduling, which can help organizations avoid lawsuits, fi nes, and grievances.
Organizations are also notifi ed if their employees’ certifi cations are about to expire, enabling them to take the necessary steps to renew those certifi cations and keep their employee statuses active. The end result is the ability to fi ll key positions that require specifi c certifi cations. These capabilities make the Kronos iSeries Central suite a comprehensive and versatile workforce management solution for the IBM iSeries platform.
Engaging employees
Kronos iSeries Scheduler streamlines manager productivity further than other scheduling solutions by involving employees in the scheduling process. By defi ning their availability, employees help streamline scheduling by enabling managers to see a list of qualifi ed, available employees. Kronos iSeries Scheduler also helps promote scheduling fairness — for instance, by allowing overtime to be distributed equitably, thus eliminating the perception of employee favoritism.
Quick and easy access to scheduling information
allows managers to:
Analyze job coverage across the organization Find available, best-fi t employees for open shifts Evaluate replacements by cost and compliance See scheduling confl icts and rule violations View expired and soon-to-expire certifi cations Compare productive to nonproductive hours
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A SOLUTION TAILORED TO MEET
the Needs of Diverse Industries
Organizations of all shapes and sizes are realizing that remaining competitive in today’s fast-paced economy requires better ways of managing employees. Kronos iSeries Scheduler helps managers in industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, and retail make scheduling decisions that help reduce labor costs and compliance risks, as well as improve productivity and employee satisfaction.
HEALTHCARE: Balance staffi ng costs with quality care
Rising healthcare labor costs continually underscore the need for nurse managers to fully leverage available staff resources. Kronos iSeries Scheduler gives managers the visibility and control to draw resources from overstaffed units that are below overtime thresholds, rather than relying on overtime or agency labor.
No longer handcuffed by isolated systems and outdated processes, nursing managers can identify a coverage issue in just one click, then access an interactive list of nurses able to fi ll the shift based on system-tracked qualifi cations, availability, and seniority. With this information, Kronos iSeries Scheduler makes it easy to monitor compliance with labor laws, union agreements, and Joint Commission regulations.
MANUFACTURING: Match labor resources to demand
Now managers can intelligently distribute their workers in order to meet expectations in productivity, even when variable demand impacts production lines. Kronos iSeries Scheduler tells them which workers have the right experience and training to cover a shift, as well as those available for scheduling who are below the overtime threshold, allowing managers to cost-effectively manage production workloads across the entire facility.
Because Kronos iSeries Scheduler automates time-consuming processes and makes it easy for employees to interact with the system from any location (desktop PC or badge terminal), communication between employees and managers is greatly improved. Managers, meanwhile, are better able to enforce schedules because labor data is captured at the source. Managers also use the system to monitor compliance with labor laws, union rules, and company policies. And in union environments where overtime must be offered according to seniority, managers can view available workers organized according to seniority with a single mouse click, thus reducing the risk of costly fi nes and grievances.
RETAIL: Reduce labor costs while enhancing service
Because profi tability is highly dependent on how well labor costs are controlled, store managers welcome the ability to anticipate labor needs more accurately. Kronos iSeries Scheduler allows store managers to lever- age business and labor forecasts when creating schedules. They are better able to avoid overstaffi ng, which drives labor costs up, and understaffi ng, which drags customer service down. It also gives managers access to precise schedule costs, which streamlines planning and accountability.
With Kronos iSeries Scheduler managers have the tools to staff the store with the right mix of employees based on workload expectations. They can also cost-effectively meet demand by fully leveraging labor resources via cross-department and cross-store scheduling. Along with the ability to track worker availability, store managers can accommodate everyone’s work and life needs whenever possible. This is critical to supporting workplace morale and employees’ attitudes toward work and the customers they serve.
Kronos Incorporated 297 Billerica Road Chelmsford, MA 01824 (800) 225-1561 (978) 250-9800 www.kronos.com
©2007, Kronos Incorporated. Kronos and the Kronos logo are registered trademarks and “Experts at Improving the Performance of People and Business” is a trademark of Kronos Incorporated or a related company. iSeries is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. All other product and company names mentioned are used for identifi cation purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners. All specifi cations are subject to change. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. 1801-25528 Rev. B
Kronos Is the Right Company for Your Workforce Management Needs
Who is Kronos? We are experts who empower organizations to effectively manage their workforce.
With three decades of experience, we are solely focused on delivering an integrated suite of software and services that enables organizations to reduce costs, increase productivity, improve employee satisfaction, and ultimately enhance the level of service they provide.
No other workforce management vendor can match our track record of revenue growth and stability, our near-perfect customer satisfaction scores, or our aggressive investments in research and development. More than 30 million employees around the world use a Kronos solution every day. Why? Because it’s a solution that works.
