So who owns Workforce Management? Is it HR?

After just returning from Las Vegas and Kronosworks where approximately 1,300 “Kronites” or Kronos Users attended this year’s conference, I was surprised by the adoption of new releases, education, sharing amongst clients and commitment to continual improvement that I saw when talking to Kronos clients and executives.

There is absolutely no question in my mind that HR needs to own any process or technology that can offer such a dramatic ROI in terms of cost savings, compliance enforcement and of course value to all stakeholders - employees, managers and HR. Rarely does any other HR application have the value or true cost savings to an organization that a properly integrated Time and Attendance/Scheduling/Labor Analytics system can offer.

Yet HR isn’t the only key stakeholder in implementing and managing these types of systems. If you are a retail client it may be store management; if you’re a hospital it may be nursing. Yet when this happens no one looks at the potential utilization of these systems across the entire workforce, but traditionally just for their domain. So in a retail opportunity yes it is a vital component for stores, but it could also be used in manufacturing or the plants, or for drivers or call centers as well.

Many times the key stakeholder does a business plan and ROI presentation to get the buy in to acquire a new system based on their needs alone but because they do not own the entire process for the entire organization, they typically do not maximize the ROI for the entire organization.

Although Kronos has done a remarkable job in trying to simplify the user experience in the latest version of their software, many clients have not gravitated to these versions yet because:

1)       No dedicated HR lead who looks for utilization improvements across the organization
2)       Minimal resources assigned to manage IT infrastructure upgrades within companies
3)       No one dedicated to training end users and administrators of systems (which is shown by low adoption of the training modules, knowledge base or Kronos training)
4)       And finally, NO one in HR typically owns the project. What I found is that the majority of Kronos clients install the product, do minimal training and then leave it alone. Often many don’t even turn on or enforce the functionality that can offer so much savings because they do not manage the “change management required” – i.e., they don’t approve all overtime, don’t accept all exceptions, etc.

By nature, people do not like change. A properly integrated WFM solution requires change. Like so many HR applications, the technology without the change just makes a bad process faster and offers a fraction of the ROI as opposed to technology with continual change management, communication and education. WFM is not an install it and be done with it technology. It requires a continued dedication by key stakeholders to drive adoption and utilization and the continual desire for improvement.

Kronos is doing a number of things to help clients with this including:

1)       Simplifying the usage of their products so less training in required
2)       Offering a variety of purchasing options, i.e., On Premise, SaaS, or Hosted - so if IT restraints are an issue let the experts handle it for you
3)       Restructuring their sales force and support to be domain specific experts. Now your support team will only cover retail if you are a retail client, hopefully driving further industry expertise and best practices.


So what can you do if you are a WFM stakeholder inside your organization and want to drive further ROI? Ask this question to your Kronos rep. “If you were (my company) what would you recommend we do to drive the most value and utilization of our Kronos applications and how can you help me demonstrate this value and ROI to my management?”

The hot news at Kronos was the mobile apps and simplified user interfaces in new releases. These were announced last year so we were just seeing first user adoption of them at this year's conference.

Kronos continues to be a very well run, profitable company with solid management and leadership. Look for them to be very active in the Merger and Acquisition space on products that are aligned to their core competencies that can expand their geographical footprint or core competencies.