Kronos iSeries SchedulingOptimize staff schedules and productivity

Empower managers to make better-informed, proactive scheduling decisions that align your workforce with business demands.

Every industry faces changes in business demand and work volume. The ability to meet these constant fluctuations with appropriate staffing levels is crucial to achieving strong bottom-line results. However, the challenges behind allocating labor resources based on highly variable workload demands are numerous and usually cannot be addressed by inefficient scheduling processes.

Obstacles faced by organizations include excessive overtime costs in one area while qualified employees in other departments remain underutilized. Others find themselves exposed to compli-ance-related risks by scheduling unqualified employees for skilled positions, which can cause costly lawsuits and grievances arising from inconsistent scheduling practices. Meanwhile, absenteeism and unexpected changes in demand can further increase an organization’s labor costs related to overtime usage and unproductive hours.

The responsibility for these challenges falls on the managers who struggle every day to plan staff coverage by relying on manual, paper-based systems for scheduling. Using automated solutions not only creates a more effective scheduling process, it also frees managers to spend more time on more mission-critical business activities. That’s where Kronos® advanced scheduling enters the picture.

Gain a Competitive Edge with Automated Labor Scheduling

Kronos iSeries Scheduler centralizes information about your workforce and business to enable you to optimize labor scheduling. Empowering managers to make better-informed, proactive scheduling decisions that align your workforce with business demands, Kronos iSeries Scheduler eases administrative burdens, minimizes labor costs, and ultimately improves your organization’s performance.

Our advanced scheduling solution combines powerful visibility and control across the entire workforce with robust, intuitive tools that help managers create the best possible schedules. Kronos iSeries Scheduler automates time-consuming scheduling tasks and displays the exact information managers need — including staffing requirements and employee skills, availability, and hours worked — to easily make swift decisions that cost-effectively place the right people in the right place at the right time.

Fully integrated with Kronos time and labor solutions, Kronos iSeries Scheduler centralizes information related to your workforce and business needs to provide a comprehensive view of your labor resources and staffing requirements. This helps maximize labor utilization across your entire organization.

Kronos Advanced SchedulingSolution for the IBM iSeries Server

Advantages of Kronos iSeries Scheduler include:

• Reduced reliance on overtime and contract labor

• Increased productivity, efficiency, and performance

• Decreased lead times — reduced downtime and delays

• Balanced needs of customers, employees, and your business

The Kronos iSeries Scheduler difference:

Decentralized scheduling: Reduce administrative burdens and standardize scheduling by involving everyone in the process.

Simplified access to information: Easy-to-use software and insightful data empower managers to create cost-effective schedules.

Improved employee satisfaction: Web-enabled application gives all workers access to and control of their scheduling information.

Enhanced visibility and control: Clear views of available labor resources across your organization can help you control labor costs.

Kronos iSeries Scheduler empowers your managers to maximize the use of your organization’s most valuable asset — your workforce. Our solution helps you do this with clear visibility over available employee resources and skills throughout your organization, helping you balance business concerns related to labor costs, compliance, employee satisfaction, productivity, and your bottom line.

Giving managers real-time access to essential decision-making information — using web-based tools right at their desktops — allows them to make cost-effective scheduling decisions that take into account government mandates, labor contracts, and organizational policies. Consistently applying pay and work rules also helps boost employee satisfaction, productivity, and overall performance.

The benefits of Kronos iSeries Scheduler include:Greater control over labor costs

Kronos iSeries Scheduler provides clear views of qualified employees — specifically, employees who have the necessary skills and availability to fill open shifts. The solution also tracks hours worked for every employee in real time, helping you control overtime costs by making the most use of your available labor resources. This enables managers to distribute hours economically across the entire workforce, limiting reliance on overtime and expensive agency labor.

Reduced risks of noncompliance

Kronos iSeries Scheduler reduces the administrative burdens of managing policies, rules, and regulations when building schedules. The solution can be configured using scheduling rules that automatically track employee qualifications, certifi-cations, and seniority so managers can monitor labor compliance while determining workload requirements. It also tracks compliance with government mandates and union rules to help reduce the risk of legal liabilities, grievances, and disputes.

Higher employee satisfaction

Kronos iSeries Scheduler helps managers ensure fair and equitable schedules that balance the needs of employees with those of your business. For example, managers who need to schedule by seniority or skill level can easily access this information — along with employee availability and worked hours — to create cost-effective schedules using best-fit employees. In addition, all employees appreciate having input into their availability, preferences, and schedules.

Bottom-line results

Kronos iSeries Scheduler provides bottom-line results by enabling managers to spend less time mired in inefficient administrative tasks and more time improving employee performance, customer service, production efficiency, and other key metrics. Your managers have the tools they need to create optimal schedules by placing the best employees in the right place, at the right time, and at the lowest cost. Your organization can also realize substantial benefits from integrating Kronos iSeries Scheduler with other business systems, including back-office ERP, payroll, and human resources applications.

Empower Your Managerswith Comprehensive Scheduling

What makes Kronos iSeries Scheduler different from other scheduling solutions? Without it, your managers lack the insight into your workforce that would enable them to make the most efficient, cost-effective use of your labor resources. Kronos iSeries Scheduler provides greater visibility and control of labor information, allowing your managers to make better scheduling decisions that maximize employee utilization.

Kronos iSeries Scheduler consists of three robust applications:Workload Planner: Address work requirements with greater clarity

The Workload Planner helps managers determine their scheduling coverage needs. It provides a view of scheduling data that tracks the details of each required position, including where the job needs to be performed, what skills are required, how many positions are needed, and when the work needs to be completed. This allows managers to view, access, and manage staff coverage based on workload.

Schedule Planner: Create a schedule from any angle

At the heart of Kronos iSeries Scheduler is the Schedule Planner, a powerful tool that enables frontline managers to consistently create efficient, fair, and cost-effective schedules. Managers can create schedules in views anchored by employee, position, or shift, such as matching employees to jobs or jobs to employees — whatever is easiest and most effective for a given scheduling task.

Schedule Assistant: One-click productivity

With the Schedule Assistant — a tool within the Schedule Planner that automates the manager’s most time-consuming administrative tasks in schedule planning — managers can find the optimal resource in a fraction of the time, eliminating the use of manual, paper-based tasks and schedules.

Through shift-based scheduling, the Schedule Assistant can also help managers fill problematic shifts. It guides managers to the optimal schedule by ranking employees according to cost, compliance, and availability. This helps managers make the most equitable and cost-effective choices, even when a complex scheduling decision must be made on the fly. Meanwhile, automated rules help ensure that the schedules managers create are equitable and adhere to government mandates, corporate policies, and labor agreements.

Kronos iSeries SchedulerView and Control Labor Resources

An Integrated Componentof the Kronos iSeries Central Suite

One of Kronos iSeries Scheduler’s most powerful benefits is its seamless integration with time and labor applications in the Kronos iSeries Central suite, providing a host of synergistic benefits. And the tight integration between Kronos iSeries Scheduler and Kronos time and labor solutions keeps planned schedules and actual time and attendance data in sync, allowing managers to make better, more proactive scheduling decisions.

Because the information in Kronos iSeries Scheduler remains in sync, managers can factor the number of hours worked for each employee, as well as see which employees are approaching overtime or are scheduled for time off, further contributing to cost-effective scheduling. And because employee information — certifications, seniority, and leave balances — is updated and shared in real time, managers can consider compliance issues during scheduling, which can help organizations avoid lawsuits, fines, and grievances.

Organizations are also notified if their employees’ certifications are about to expire, enabling them to take the necessary steps to renew those certifications and keep their employee statuses active. The end result is the ability to fill key positions that require specific certifications. These capabilities make the Kronos iSeries Central suite a comprehensive and versatile workforce management solution for the IBM iSeries platform.

Engaging employeesKronos iSeries Scheduler streamlines manager productivity further than other scheduling solutions by involving employees in the scheduling process. By defining their availability, employees help streamline scheduling by enabling managers to see a list of qualified, available employees. Kronos iSeries Scheduler also helps promote scheduling fairness — for instance, by allowing overtime to be distributed equitably, thus eliminating the perception of employee favoritism.

Quick and easy access to scheduling information allows managers to:

• Analyze job coverage across the organization

• Find available, best-fit employees for open shifts

• Evaluate replacements by cost and compliance

• See scheduling conflicts and rule violations

• View expired and soon-to-expire certifications

• Compare productive with nonproductive hours

Organizations of all shapes and sizes are realizing that remaining competitive in today’s fast-paced economy requires better ways of managing employees. Kronos iSeries Scheduler helps managers in industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, and retail make scheduling decisions that help reduce labor costs and compliance risks, as well as improve productivity and employee satisfaction.

HEALTHCARE: Balance staffing costs with quality care

Rising healthcare labor costs continually underscore the need for nurse managers to fully leverage available staff resources. Kronos iSeries Scheduler gives managers the visibility and control to draw resources from overstaffed units that are below overtime thresholds, rather than relying on overtime or agency labor.

No longer restricted by isolated systems and outdated processes, nursing managers can identify a coverage issue in just one click, then access an interactive list of nurses able to fill the shift based on system-tracked qualifications, availability, and seniority. With this information, Kronos iSeries Scheduler makes it easy to monitor compliance with labor laws, union agreements, and Joint Commission regulations.

MANUFACTURING: Match labor resources to demand

Now managers can intelligently distribute their workers to meet expectations in productivity, even when variable demand impacts production lines. Kronos iSeries Scheduler tells them which workers have the right experience and training to cover a shift, as well as those available for scheduling who are below the overtime threshold, allowing managers to cost-effectively manage production workloads across the entire facility.

RETAIL: Reduce labor costs while enhancing service

Because profitability is highly dependent on how well labor costs are controlled, store managers welcome the ability to anticipate labor needs more accurately. Kronos iSeries Scheduler allows store managers to leverage business and labor forecasts when creating schedules. Managers are better able to avoid overstaffing, which drives labor costs up, and understaffing, which drags customer service down. It also gives managers access to precise schedule costs, which streamlines planning and accountability.

With Kronos iSeries Scheduler, managers have the tools to staff the store with the right mix of employees based on workload expectations. They can also cost-effectively meet demand by fully leveraging labor resources via cross-department and cross-store scheduling. Along with the ability to track worker availability, store managers can accommodate everyone’s work and life needs whenever possible. This is critical to supporting workplace morale and employees’ attitudes toward work and the customers they serve.

A Tailored Solutionto Meet the Needs of Diverse Industries

Kronos is a leading provider of workforce management and human capital management cloud solutions. Kronos industry-centric workforce applications are purpose-built for businesses, healthcare providers, educational institutions, and government agencies of all sizes. Tens of thousands of organizations — including half of the Fortune 1000® — and more than 40 million people in over 100 countries use Kronos every day. Visit kronos.com. Kronos: Workforce Innovation That Works™.

kronos.com© 2018 Kronos Incorporated. Kronos and the Kronos logo are registered trademarks and Workforce Innovation That Works is a trademark of Kronos Incorporated or a related company. For a full list of Kronos trademarks, please visit the “trademarks” page at kronos.com. All other trademarks, if any, are property of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change. All rights reserved. CV0891-USv1

Put Kronos iSeries Scheduling to work for you:+1 800 225 1561 | kronos.com/products/kronos-iseries-central-suite