How Kronos Scheduling Software Can Save Your Business Time

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Lean - Kanban Scheduling Systems (105-slide PowerPoint presentation). A Lean Kanban System is a scheduling system that helps determine what to produce, when to produce it, and how much to produce. Kanban scheduling systems are useful when - lot sizes differ between process steps, - process cycle times are unbalanced, or - when distance introduces time lag or [read more]

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One of the most challenging tasks a manager can undertake is creating a compliant, fair schedule that keeps everyone happy. Online scheduling has made the process easier for many managers.

Kronos scheduling software is an online solution that can take much of the monotony from scheduling and help your business schedule more efficiently and effectively.

Here are a few ways how Kronos scheduling software can help you today.

Scheduling Optimization

Managing employee schedules and making sure everything is covered is no easy task. With the Kronos rules system, you can streamline scheduling, scheduling workloads by shift, job, hour, and location. Streamlined scheduling ensures you can schedule quickly and easily while maintaining compliance with labor and employee requirements.

You can also generate workloads based on schedules. Workload-based schedules work particularly well if your staff is allocated by volume (sales volume, units processed, patient data, etc.) The system will modify schedules individually, per shift, and organization based on volume, ensuring that you are not scheduling employees when they are not needed but are at work.

Scheduling optimization gets accomplished by a scheduling matrix. The scheduling matrix lets planners create settings that regulate how time gets managed. Those settings then determine staffing needs and assign work to specific staff based on availability, hours worked, etc.

For example, a retail outlet could plan for a holiday rush by plugging in workload volume from years past. The system uses that information to address volume ebbs and flow. It saves time because when employees are not needed, they do not get scheduled, but when anticipated volume increases, managers do not have to spend time scrambling to adjust to the volume increases.

Tracking Hours

There are five major limitations on hours an employee can work in any given week:

• Requested and granted time off
• Holding some employees to part-time
• Ensuring full-time employees work a full week
• Labor laws for employees under certain ages
• Leave

Any of these can be in play on any given week.

Juggling employee and compliance rules and ensuring that you are honoring an employee’s requests when possible is challenging. Limiting employee time, complying with state and federal employment laws, and ensuring that you have the employees when needed require flexibility and easy-to-implement rules.

An automated scheduling software lets you manage those demands almost automatically. Once you plug in work requirements and set rules, Kronos does the rest. It monitors compliance and helps adjust work schedules to meet work needs.

Kronos also saves time by being able to present employment data on demand via reports. With automated compliance, you can see where you are legally covered and where you may have to make changes. Additionally, notifications can be automated, allowing a manager to be notified of schedule changes, compliance issues, or workload demands.

Enhanced Shift Coverage

Sometimes, a scheduled shift is unable to be met by an assigned employee. Shifting schedules gives employees flexibility if they need some time off or some extra time they want to work. Kronos makes shift changes and swapping easy. Easier shift changes save employers time because they do not have to physically oversee the swapping or substitution process.

Kronos also monitors shift needs and alerts the manager of them. A manager can identify needs and trends, leading to fewer scheduling conflicts or double scheduling of employees. At the backend, better shift coverage and management means fewer manual entries and almost assured compliance.

Best of all, enhanced scheduling and shift coverage means happier employees. It also means a manager can head off conflicts and fill gaps, reducing stress at work. The flexibility in scheduling will improve employee morale and ensure that every shift has adequate coverage, which can only lead to a better-functioning workplace.

Complete Documentation

Documentation of any system is always overlooked but is also vitally important to ensure a smoothly operating scheduling system. Kronos makes documentation easy. A manager can take screenshots, document shortcuts, record training processes, and document all upgrades.

All of that means less time testing configurations, and if a configuration test is not working, less time trying to reinvent the wheel to get to what the system was before.

Ease of Configuration

Kronos runs on configuration and rules. With many scheduling platforms, setting up those rules can be a hassle and take weeks, if not months. In some cases, it is an ongoing process that never gets entirely completed. Kronos’ intuitive rules-making tools let a manager quickly identify a rule that is needed and create, test, and implement it.

While the configuration process saves a lot of time, the result of those rules is an almost fully automatic scheduling engine. Automation reduces the time employees must spend manually making schedule changes and managers must spend trying to get a schedule to meet their organization’s needs.

Final Thoughts

Kronos scheduling software makes life easier for employees, managers, and, ultimately, customers. Shift and workloads get covered, shift changes are no longer difficult to enact, and documentation gets created easily. Additionally, compliance issues are no longer a process of physically tracking them but rather are at a scheduling manager’s figurative fingertips.

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