Kronos Launches HR App for iPad

December 4, 2012 Alex Woodie

Kronos last month rolled out a new app that allow users of its iSeries Central suite to access their human resources software from an iPad. The new app, called Workforce Tablet, provides access to command HR management tasks, such as approving timecards or shifting worker schedules around, and also includes basic analytic functionality. The $870 million company also made several other announcements at its annual KronosWorks conference.

Workforce Tablet is a native iOS app designed to provide managers and employees with access to Kronos’ server-based HR and human capital management (HCM) suites, including iSeries Central and Workforce Central, from an Apple iPad. The software delivers functionality in five areas, including: geosensing, scheduling, staffing, and timecard approvals.

Analytics. The analytics component includes a collection of reports, dashboards, and key performance indicators (KPIs) that show managers how efficiently their employees are working, whether service and revenue goals are being met, how overtime is affecting operations, and whether any changes need to be made.
Scheduling. This component allows managers to create new schedules, modify existing schedules, and reassign shifts to other workers. When a shift becomes open due to an illness or other unforeseen event, there’s a nifty little function in Workforce Tablet that will automatically find a “best-fit” replacement based on factors set by the user, such as seniority, pay-level, or skills matching.
The staffing functionality in Workforce Tablet allows managers to review past staffing levels for their operations, and to rectify any future staffing problems (too many or two few workers) by tweaking the schedule, which involves dragging and dropping icons on the screen.
Timecard Approvals. Monitoring the clocking in and out is central to so many functions within the Kronos product, and now managers can work on timecard-related items from an iPad. This will allow managers to review exceptions flagged by the system, such as absences and late and early punches, and mark them for the record.
Geosensing. The geosensing functions give managers an informational edge in the workforce in two ways. First, for managers who will visit multiple locations, Workforce Tablet will automatically detect where the manager is, and only display data that’s relevant to that location. Secondly, geosensing allows managers to see where their mobile employees are when they clock in and clock out with their iSeries Mobile Employee app.

iSeries Mobile Employee, in case you missed it, was one of two new mobile apps that Kronos unveiled as part of iSeries Central version 6.2 earlier this year. The software, which runs on iOS, Android, and Blackberry mobile OSes, enable employees to clock in and out and do other basic tasks that are often done at one of Kronos’ time-clock kiosks, such as check vacation accruals, submit time-off requests, initiate a union action, or ask for a raise (OK, maybe not the last two).

Kronos has given its customers a clean, iPad interface for interacting with their iSeries Central applications with the new Workforce Tablet.

Kronos also offers a manager version of the iSeries Mobile app that delivers manager-type functionality from a phone. But the new Workforce Tablet looks to be much cooler. “We really do think the tablet is a transformational technology that is going to change the way people … work every single day,” said Bill Bartow, Kronos’ vice president of product management, at the KronosWorks show.

More than 2,100 people attended the Kronos conference in Las Vegas last month, making it the most heavily attended Kronos conference ever, CEO Aron Ain said at the show. Kronos has grown considerably over the years, and now counts more than 20,000 distinct organizations in 100 countries as customers. Several thousand of them are iSeries Central customers. On-premise deployments of software like Workforce Central still account for most of Kronos revenue, which hit $860 million last year, but the cloud is gaining fast. Ain announced that Kronos now has 6,000 customers using its cloud-based solutions.

At the show, Kronos also launched three new applications for InTouch, the touchscreen time-clock/kiosk/app-hosting-machine/coffeemaker that it launched last year. The new apps include Wayfinder, which helps employees find their way to their work location; EnrollMe, which helps employees join their employer’s healthcare plan; and Employee Survey, which allows an employer to host surveys.

The company also announced Workforce Task Management, a new module that joins the Workforce Central suite. Task Management will help companies in the retail and hospitality industries to automate the administration of tasks that are performed by workers, such as cleaning a hotel room or restocking shelves in an aisle. The software is pre-integrated with other modules in the Workforce Central suite, including Time and Attendance, Scheduling, HR and Payroll, and others. A Kronos spokesperson says Task Management only works with Workforce Central at this time.