Designed for small businesses where everyone wears multiple hats, UKG Ready® is an HR solution that guides users through their day-to-day HR activities. Capabilities span from HR and payroll to talent and time.
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UKG Workforce Central (discontinued)
Score 7.0 out of 10
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UKG Workforce Central (formerly Kronos Workforce Central) was a suite of HR Management offerings targeted mainly at enterprise customers with larger-scale and more complex HR and workforce management issues. The product is discontinued.
Workforce Central was our first online time and labor maintenance system. We used it for about 10 years and though it worked, it was far too complicated for what we needed, and we overcomplicated the setup of it over the years to a degree that it was not functional. UKG Ready's …
We evaluated Ceridian HCM Dayforce prior to implementing Kronos. In fact we were a Ceridian customer. The cost of the implementation was almost five times the cost for Kronos. We believed at the time of evaluation and it has proven true that Kronos is more innovative and keeps …
All I can say about Kronos is they know timekeeping. I have used both Workforce Ready and Workforce Central for timekeeping, projects/tasks, accruals, and attendance. Kronos does a great job. I can not speak to the HR and Payroll modules of these systems as I have never used …
WFR beats out Workday in the area of having more sellable features. The only downside is many of those sellable features do not function properly or are limited in how they were designed. I still consider WFR a minimum viable product and many of the features are not ready for …
Sr. SAP Business Process Analyst/Team Lead HR/FICO COE
Chose UKG Ready
We selected Kronos Workforce Ready as it was priced right for what we intended on using it for. We selected them also because we have been using Kronos Workforce Central for manufacturing and it seemed like the right thing to do for consistency in processes for timekeeping. It …
Kronos Workforce Central had a more straightforward way to use it and a more user-friendly platform. Kronos Workforce Central had better pricing than UltiPro.
WFR is a fair stand-alone HCM product for a small company. It has the capabilities to support HR, timekeeping, scheduling, and leave/absence management. No issues to report with the interface between WFR & UKG Payroll. People Analytics does not support WFR. Running reports require consolidating information from both platforms.
This product was marketed to us as a school and several schools in our area use the program. However, the implementation team we were set-up with had limited school experience and we are still working on the best way to do some of the timekeeping issues where I know that could have been handled better. That being said from a payroll and reporting side it has been great to capture so much data (at times almost too much) and have the system do automatic allocations of salaries and general ledger reports. The reporting takes some getting used to, but overall I've been able to run reports to see and track just about anything I want. Our employees also love the self service compared to our previous products where they can make W4, direct deposit and other updates on their own without having to get HR involved.
Time & Attendance - Easy for workforce to use especially with the mobile app.
Payroll Processing - Offers step by step navigation to process payroll seamlessly.
Reporting Features - Ability to filter data easily and reporting feature is strong.
Implementation Teams - They are a true partner in this process and are detailed, professional, organized, and easy to work with.
Customer Service - By the click of a button, I can open a case or chat request, and UKG is very prompt in reaching back out to me. If it is regarding payroll processing, the response time is almost immediate.
I personally feel like timekeeping is very well thought out and has some powerful tools built in. There is a bit of a learning curve but with strategically placed SMEs we were able to get the use and functionality we needed out of the system.
Workforce planning has been crucial in planning operational support in our retail and customer service centers. It is also editable and modifiable as needed.
We plan to renew our support and use of UKG Ready each year unless it becomes unavailable or the district seeks another vendor. As of now, there are no plans to changes vendors. The district staff is now familiar with using UKG. Another vendor will need to meet the same expectations we have come to enjoy with using UKG
Now that the system is installed and operational, the "pain is gone"...therefore we see no reason to change to a different application. There is no functionality that is missing from the system that would drive us to consider another solution at this time. Maintenance support from Kronos is sufficient and updates occur regularly.
The improvements have made some of my previous challenges easier...the new layout definitely makes it easier and you can toggle between different views. Some of the new features in recruitment have made things easier for our hiring managers...they really seem to like these features.
The system seems very stable. Being hosted in the cloud, we are vulnerable to internet speeds and busy times. The system has been down a couple times over the 3 months we have been live, but Kronos resolved the issues very quickly. To have access from a desktop, tablet, time clock, or phone app is one of the best features....users have almost NO REASON they can't clock in.
We were always told that Kronos was the best, but there are reports that we got out of ADP and other payroll providers that we cannot get out of Kronos. One example is a report of Productive/Non-productive hours by department. We also need the dollar amount associated with the hours. This is information that is required on our cost report and we were told that that report is unavailable. It is very frustrating when I can't get what I need.
If I was only rating support itself that would be a 10. Every support case I have entered has been addressed efficiently and with the desired result. On the implementation and transition to support there were multiple issues that those doing the implementation or transition could not answer or workflows and various settings left undone only to be discovered later. We implemented 3 different modules and the expertise we got for each one varied widely.
Having no experience with Kronos prior to using it in March 2016, their customer service team taught me how to use it the right way after my initial training at work. I am well-versed in data analysis using Excel and Access primarily, so once I discovered that Kronos had a reporting feature built in, I've used the feature quite a few times to help our properties evaluate their production costs and make good labor decisions. I give Kronos a 10 because once a person takes the time to learn how to use the software, they'll realize that Kronos is far more effective than most, and gives users more ways to access their information where and when they want to.
Our in-person training was a hybrid. Live online training with an instructor. They were very knowledgeable of the product & the area they were training on. I asked several specific questions and if they didn't know the answer immediately they followed up after class.
Lots & lots of training available. Timing was wrong for our organization. We had lengthy down time in the beginning while the implementation consultant setup our system. We did online training then. Difficult to train on a generic system setup that isn't your industry and hard to understand what you are learning how to do w/o actually being in your system. Online training was well documented and the instructors were very knowledgeable.
Make sure the people who are doing the build have extensive knowledge on employment law and asking the right questions. I would bet that the people who helped with our builds did not read any of our employment contracts or ordinances; and when I asked questions about how other companies handled certain basic dictates from federal employment laws, they didn't have any idea what FMLA, FLSA, etc were.
UKG has exceeded all expectations, and we selected UKG Ready because of the robust growth opportunities it provided to our company in terms of improving efficiency and processes. Additionally, we were excited about UKG's different support model that has been proven to be extremely effective despite the scary concept of not having someone assigned to our account. The specialized support is something that no other company offered.
Kronos and Dayforce are the two timekeeping systems I’ve worked with in recent years. Kronos feels a little more comprehensive and is my primary timekeeping tool both for myself as well as my staff. Kronos is a great tool for a wide range of shifts, working locations, and pay codes. In this context, I would pick Kronos over Dayforce. On the opposite side, Dayforce is extremely user-friendly and has a “cleaner” user interface if that is a contributing factor for anyone. Also, for managers who oversee large teams (30-50 team members) then Dayforce is a bit more simple to approve time cards, hours, and leave. Kronos is a bit clunky with all the clicks, and managing large teams of hourly employees would be a huge time suck to go in to review/approve all.
With our previous third-party payroll provider, payroll processing was a 6-8 hour day. With the UKG Ready/UKG Telestaff combination, the process is completed in under 4 hours on a regular basis.
Cloud hosting comes at a cost, but we have found that having the convenience of 24-hour support is a welcome offset to in-house IT, onsite hosting, and hardware management. UKG Ready's cloud hosting services are constantly updating software and feature redundant operations for records management.
As an organization whose HR department is completely in-house, the UKG Ready platform saves HR time on a daily basis with multiple aspects of their day-to-day processes. All services from onboarding to offboarding and all components in between are available on UKG Ready.
Kronos is much more expensive than the previous systems we were using, so at this point the ROI is negative. The idea is that it will allow us to scale and grow the company more easily so time will tell if that is the case.
