How to Track Skills and Certifications in Workforce Timekeeper

Skills and certifications are a useful Kronos feature that allows organizations to schedule employees more effectively. By using skills and certification, a business can better serve its customers or a hospital can ensure that departments have nurses with specific certifications. Let’s start by defining skills and certifications, and then talk about where Kronos stores this information, and finally, how it is used.

What is a Skill? 

What is a Certification?

How are they different?

A skill is a particular ability someone has. A good example of that is the ability to speak a foreign language. A person can speak a language, or they can’t. There is no process or test to determine that an employee can speak Farsi, they just can...or in my case, they can't.  

A certification is similar to a skill in that it is learned; however a certification has a designation by some authority that the individual has a specific skill or ability. It is also assigned to an employee for a limited period of time. A good example here is a license to drive a fork lift. There is an agency that tests a person on this skill, and once that person passes a test, he or she is certified for a limited portion of time. Fundamentally, skills are something you know and certifications are something you earn and expire in a set amount of time.

In Workforce Timekeeper, skills and certifications are tracked in the People Record. The skills can be listed, as with the certifications, followed by their expiration date. From the People Record, this information is used by other application within Kronos. Two areas where skills and certifications are used are the schedule and reports applications.

In many industries, it is vital that employees with specific certifications are on the floor or in the building. In a hospital setting, nurses with specific certifications are necessary to provide a specific type of care. In a manufacturing environment, a certain number of fork lift drivers should be on the floor throughout the shift. If I was a retail store manager in Tucson, Arizona, I would like to know if any of my sales people speak Spanish so I could provide that service to customers that are not English speaking. With Kronos’ advanced scheduler, I can create a schedule that will ensure these things happen. I also have the ability to run reports on these employees. As an HR manager at a hospital, I would need to know if any of my nurses CPR certifications expire this month. I can run a report for the CPR certification skill and get a list of all employees, and the date their CPR certification expires.

Skills and certifications represent another way that Workforce can take advantage of a diverse work population and improve the organization. Make sure you are taking advantage of skills and certifications!