The Top 10 Tips for Successful Kronos Training

The 4th Annual IT Adoption Insight Report found, because of lack of user-adoption for new software, companies are experiencing productivity losses of 17%: the equivalent of giving everyone on staff every Friday off. At 17%, the economic value of user losses outweighs 100% of many IT budgets. Creating company wide end user adoption of Kronos software is a critical factor for productivity and increased ROI. How can a company ensure that user adoption in your new Kronos application is achieved throughout the organization? The answer is: with strategic Kronos™ Training.

Just for you, we have put together the top ten tips you need to know to help achieve user-adoption through Kronos training.

1. Understand How your Organization is Using Kronos™

A thorough understanding of how you plan on using and benefiting from the software is the first step of the training process and a goal of user adoption. Once you have outlined your goals and the benefits you are planning on, you will be able to efficiently outline an optimized training experience. Make sure to understand exactly what your corporation is gaining from training, including Kronos labor productivity as well as internal and external Kronos support. 

2. Build a Focused and Specific Kronos™ Training Plan

Once you have outlined how you will be using the software as well as the benefits you will gain, it is time to build a training plan. First, ask the question who is your audience and what exactly do they need to learn? Take the time to write out bullet points for every specific topic that needs to be covered during the training. Once you have outlined what needs to be covered, it is time to create a comprehensive time-line for your training. Make sure you have accurate time planned out for what you need to cover with all users.

3. Build a Training Curriculum

When building training curriculum, include an employee in the building process, specifically one who has been through training before. Involving them in the curriculum building will ensure that you have a truly comprehensive program and will give your audience an advocate they can relate with. Once you have your curriculum outlined, develop Kronos training materials and a Kronos training manual. A Kronos training consultant can help to develop all of these training tools. 

4. Customize the Training for your Specific Audience

Within a training audience there are many different levels of education as well as learning styles. Make sure to understand every user group and how they learn best; from what materials make the most sense to what learning event is the most useful for that group. Appeal to each different learning style: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Fill in your curriculum with real world examples, making sure they reflect situations your audience would experience during their day-to-day responsibilities. Use language and definitions that are familiar and recognized. Finally, take the time a participant has spent with the organization into account. They may be a new hire, in a new role, or just new to Kronos™. All of these cases should be considered when customizing training materials or a learning event. 

5. Involve the Trainees

Make sure the employees are integrally involved in each step of the training project, from discovery to development and lastly, delivery. The more input and involvement these employees have, the more they will feel the change is being made for their benefit, creating trust. The more reflective of the "real-world" the deliverables are, the more valuable they will be to all employees being trained. 

6. Give your Audience What they want and Nothing Else

Make sure the only content you include in your training is what your employees need to know. Nothing else. Follow your training plan exactly. Adding extras or unnecessary content will only drag out your training schedule and frustrate your audience. Remember that you have a limited attention span to work with. For example, in 2013 the National Center for Biotechnology Information and the U.S. National Library of Medicine reported that the average adult human has an attention span of merely 8 seconds.You will lose participants quickly by training them on things they don't need to know, or that won't affect them on the job. 

7. Always Keep User Adoption as your End Goal

 One of the end goals of Kronos™ training is to achieve successful user adoption across your organization.  Although there are many benefits when Kronos™ is integrated, such as allowing an employee to perform more efficiently or giving a manager analytic information needed for scheduling, successful user adoption will ensure the highest level of ROI and long-term usage from the program.

8. Teach the Why Behind Kronos™

It is crucial that everyone involved in training understands how implementing Kronos™ will benefit, not only the organization, but also them individually. There are many benefits to implementing Kronos™. Kronos™ may help make their jobs more efficient, it may give a manager more information and therefore more control over what they do. Kronos™ may help minimize costs in several areas, increasing profit sharing for employees and putting more money in their pockets. Motivation and consistency are the key variables in user-adoption as well as making employees feel involved in a worthwhile endeavor. If you have all three, you are more likely to experience a successful training.

9. Training Environment

Make every effort to have a stable training environment, supported with quality training materials, such as hand-outs or manuals. The training materials used should closely match the real world tasks employees undertake, and be efficient enough that employees (or trainees) will want to use them because they recognize the task the employees are undertaking and are "to the point." 

     10. Post Training Analysis

Often overlooked, Post Training Analysis is a crucial step to ensure long term training success. No training will be perfect the first time. An important part of user adoption is making sure you hit the mark with training by regularly identifying areas of improvement. Look for signs of gaps in your training. For example, if multiple trainees start asking the same question about a certain part of the program, that could indicate a significant training gap.