When applying the Training Zen approach to your Kronos training plan it is vital to fully understand your employees and how they will be using the Kronos Workforce Central (WFC) application. One of the first tasks to take on is to analyze the different users in the organization and figure out what they need to know. By properly analyzing this, and avoiding some common pitfalls, you will have an excellent start to your needs analysis and by extension, your entire Kronos training program.
The challenge of this analysis is not to focus on WHO your employees are, but WHAT they will do in the WFC application. This analysis is not to determine job roles, but user roles. It is not as simple as it seems. Sure, we can all figure out the user that will simply swipe in and out at the Timekeeper Terminal, or to assign the same rights to managers of different departments, but there are other examples that aren't so clear. Often, senior level managers are assigned tasks such as approving timecards, making historical edits, or applying comments to employee punches. Because of their workload these managers pass these tasks along to their administrative assistants. Commonly the assistants will log on to WFC as the manager to complete these tasks. This isn't the best course of action. These managers, and their assistants are one user group because the tasks they are responsible to complete are so similar. There will be some variations to this, however the significant amount of tasks are the same.
The steps are pretty simple. First, know the tasks. Second, review the list with each employee role to create employee-based task lists. Finally, review your employee roles for identical or near identical task list to create user groups. Know every task and list them. In my experience, it is best to keep an open mind here. It's easy to get some "thought creep" here. You start listing tasks, then, before you are done, you start thinking about what your employees will do. It is a natural progression, but you will be better served by completing the task list completely before moving forward.
I refer to the next step as the "bridge" step. Here, you take your employees, grouped by job role or by title, and create a list of tasks for each. This reiterates the importance of that original task list.
Often you find tasks you hadn't considered previously are actually necessary for different roles. Once the tasks are assigned by job role, it is simply a matter of taking the "merge" step. Look for similarities in tasks by job role. Really, you are best served by ignoring the job roles here. Simply focus on the list of tasks that must be completed and build your user groups. Remember, you may not have any identical lists. When this occurs, you have some decisions to make. Do you have the budget to create more user groups, meaning a larger investment in training materials and courses? Do you have the time built into the project to accept the additional training courses? Is it necessary to merger user groups to minimize expenses? These decisions are hard to make. By merging user groups with less than identical lists of tasks, you risk providing a "less than Zen" training experience for your learners. Still, we live in the real world and tough decisions are a part of it.
Well, there you have it. Once this analysis is complete, you now have the "Who." Just like so much in the Training Zen approach, there are easy tasks, but tough decisions. Keep a close eye on the Training Zen blog (oops, sorry Bryan, The Kronos Guy blog) as we delve into the other big questions for your training plan.