UKG Workforce Central (discontinued)

Formerly Kronos Workforce Central

It gave me real time reporting so that I could see if we were on track to have excessive overtime usage so that we could call in other employees to utilize instead of paying out overtime pay

KRONOS made it easy to track trends for employees who abused our call off procedures. We would take historical reports to see if someone had a habit of calling off every other Friday, or the day after payday and so forth.

KRONOS allowed us to track people clocking in or out too soon or clocking in late or staying over in the break areas on the clock to gain extra non-approved work time.

Now that I work at a smaller company I do not see having such an elaborate system for time keeping, but with a group at 100 plus, it has great function in the day to day operations.

I really do not have much to complain about the usefulness of KRONOS

Easy to use and navigate

Web-based, can be accessed anywhere, anytime

Quick Links makes it easy to find frequently-used options

Extensive range of setup tools to customize user experience

Training required to use the product effectively, not simple at first

Dependent on Java, frequent updates to Java necessary to continue using the Kronos platform

Reporting tools are extensive and solid, though some reports can only be extracted in PDF, not in the more usable Excel format. How Kronos determines which can be extracted in Excel vs. PDF, I can't tell.

Reporting. Employees want to know how much time they have, maybe it is to qualifying Family Leave or to see how much time they have accrued towards vacation.

Collaboration. With a large retail environment, you need a simple way for multiple managers to keep track of all employees.

Employee Request approvals. It could be done very simply and with either searching their name or employee number.

User Interface: It could be a bit more update for modern UI. It feels like an old database, and although it is easy to learn, it would be less intimidating if it looked and felt more up to date.

Searching for multiple dates for a specific employee would be cumbersome and we would have to write down parts, versus adding them on the fly.

Time and Attendance integration is exceptional, whether using time clocks on online clocking capabilities at off-site locations that lack physical time clocks

The ability to track details from an HR perspective, such as educational requirements (and expirations), immunization status, etc was well built

Security is very granular, so you can give certain users access to certain pieces of the application, while maintaining security in other areas.

Administration of the system is complex. There is no way that an organization with no formal IT department will be able to effectively able to manage the complexity of the system without some outside assistance. This wasn't a problem for our organization as we had a large, formal IT department, but we had four people involved in the build process and one person dedicating approximately 30% of their time to the day-to-day management of the system.

The server requirements are extremely robust for the system, utilizing more resources than I really think should be required. Although the system does support virtualization, you have to dedicate a significant amount of CPU and memory to each virtual machine to obtain peak performance.

Although you can import data from an extract, this is complex to do. Even if you have someone who is a SQL (this is the version we used) expert, developing importation scripts is difficult. Most likely, if you are doing a switch from a previous system, you will need third party assistance to develop the import / validation scripts.

WFC helps to provide a single point of view into your timekeeping and employee data and information for management.

We have found the WFC in the timekeeping arena helps managers make superior staffing decisions based on the use of Hyperfinds queries in conjunction with excellent reporting capabilities.

Our employees find the intuitive and informative user interface very easy to navigate.

Simple guided " in product" how to's -- hover over help with more of a " Would you like to see more ... " style of help

How about large " Task buttons" that walk through steps ....

More concise UI

This product allows for keeping track of time and attendance a lot better than papertime cards. We have found that being able to setup rules for lunches and breaks will keep people from abusing these privileges. The ability to request time off and get manager approval allows for accurate times taken from employees.

I think that the supersearch feature when trying to troubleshoot something can be a bit frustrating to get what you are looking for. Once you do find the information it is very helpful but can be very hard to get the right wording for what you are looking for.

Fully integrated suite - Timekeeping, Scheduling, Staffing, and Business Analytics.

Meeting the need through technology - Workforce Mobile.

User Friendly.

Java Is- Soon to be addressed in upcoming releases - Moving away from a Java based platform

Predictive Demand - Health Trending Need yet to be met by Kronos

Prevents others from punching an employee IN/OUT by requiring biometric validation

Alerts the supervisor of schedule variances and discourages employees from taking long lunches and stealing time by punching in early or out late.

Maintains detailed records of who, when and where a punch was created.

Reduces errors for Payroll by requiring supervisor review of timecards prior to extractions.

Access to timeclocks through Device Manager, web browser and GuiSim provide a variety of tools for resolving issues as they arise.

Pay codes are provided to supervisors for their use, but, restrictions do not exist that prevent the application to inappropriate groups.

Timeclock devices and annual maintenance fees are expensive.

Timeclock devices do have limitations to firmware updates based upon motherboard version. This can have an effect on functionality. Depot Exchange for problem devices does not upgrade the board.

Detergents/cleansers do erode some employees' fingerprints.

Kronos is the market leader when it comes to timekeeping and the devices used to support it. There is a reason for that: They work as designed, and they work well.

Once configured properly, the stability of a WFC server is admirable, considering that the majority of deployments are on Windows Server

The layout of WFC is very well thought out. It is easy for non-technical personnel to navigate with minor training

Product Support can be difficult from a back end perspective. Questions regarding database and network infrastructure (network load balancers/VIPs) can drag as it is hard to get their L2 Support team to engage them

Although this is true of any application that requires a JRE installed to use from the desktop, Kronos is very sensitive to what version of Java you use. Be warned: delay or cancel any updates until they have been vetted on Kronos

The Kronos devices are great. However, the Workforce Device Manager module is not as hardy and foolproof as the clocks. Good idea, but still needs work.

WFC aggregates the entire timekeeping and management in one system.

The software makes scheduling very easy according to staffing and workforce needs, and will do some of the work for you.

Edits are incredibly easy to make.

There are some areas and situations where management and technical staff are locked out of editing or correcting an error, and this should be addressed.

The ability to view workforce by department and by department needs can be useful for more thorough scheduling.

Designations for FT and PT workstaff and those with specific scheduling restrictions should be more pronounced.

Timekeeping including clock punching, web punching, and cell app punching

PTO management -- submission, review, auto deduction

Pay rules - ability to designate rules based on groups, individuals, and more

As a web-based solution, Workforce Payroll requires internet connectivity for data access – offline capabilities are not available.

Being Microsoft-based, browser support is limited to Internet Explorer.

Kronos’ international presence will always be restricted as long as Workforce Payroll (and HR) is only available in the English language.

Workforce Central offers an array of time collection options, including physical time clock, web time clock, mobile, and a pay from schedule option. Departments have the flexibility of choosing the time collection option that meets their need.

Workforce Central time cards have an impressive audit trail and reporting capability, allowing supervisors to determine how an employee's punch was added to their time card.

Kronos is enhancing the mobile capabilities withing Workforce Central, allowing additional flexibility to those departments and employees that need this option.

Workforce Central supervisors interact with the system using a web browser. Advanced time card options require the client PC to use the Java Runtime Environment (Java). Kronos has struggled over the years to keep up with the Java updates and at times, this has been a source of frustration for our campus supervisors. Java related issues include very slow system response times and in some instances, a failure to access the system completely. In fairness, many vendors have also struggled with Java updates. Preferably, vendors would move away from the Java requirement.

On a University campus, student employees often have multiple jobs. These part-time jobs are in various departments with different funding sources and supervisors. The Workforce Central product historically did not work well for employees with multiple jobs. Kronos has begun to offer new software enhancements that are designed to address this issue, but the updates are an additional cost and not included in the base Workforce Central product.

While the Workforce Central solution contains many standard reports, adding custom reports is not easy and requires billable support from Kronos.

Kronos is user friendly. you dont have to have studied rocket science to get it.

Kronos accuracy is impeaccable. When clocking in and or out accuracy can be the difference between a few cents to a dollar. :)

Kronos would oftentime not detect a punch in or punch out. This became extremely frustrating as that would result in extra paperwork on the employee's part.

Kronos would time out within 2 minutes or in the midst of a punch in/out.