The world of workforce management is experiencing exciting changes. WFM vendors are beginning to re-platform, consumers are prioritizing innovation, and employees everywhere are expecting new consumer-grade apps to support their day-to-day work operations. Last week we discussed the wave of digital disruption by diving into the necessity of moving into the cloud. The next disruption to watch out for is the continual rise in importance of enhancing employee experience.
The Importance of Enhancing Employee Experience
Gartner defines employee experience as "the employees' perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with their employer's customers, leaders, teams, processes, policies, tools and work environment (Gartner, 2018)."
The WFM software used by an organization, specifically Kronos, often touches every employee in the workplace. Particularly for hourly, contract, and project-based employees, the Kronos application will be used every single day - meaning the employee experience is dramatically important.
As technology advances in the workplace, employees have rising expectations. Over the past five years, big advancements in mobile technology have made the delivery of mobile business processes an expectation. Workers do not want to be held to the constraints of a traditional desktop and want to avoid traditional WFM processes. In order to keep up with the demand of an increasingly mobile and flexible workforce, organizations need to continually adopt the new improvements to the employee experience.
Some of these updated processes include:
Geolocation, or geo-sensing/geo-fencing, is a great new tools that allows workers to easily check in for their shift from their mobile device based on proximity to their normal work area and without having to queue to use a time clock. Kronos Mobile includes this capability. Kronos mobile not only enhances the employee experience, but can also reduce a supervisor’s workload.
While demand-driven scheduling optimization has been a requirement for certain industries (particularly retail, hospitality and healthcare) and has been delivered by a number of advanced WFM solutions over the past decade. It is crucial that employees are able to have a better work-life balance through improved schedule visibility, flexibility and fairness. Better shifts can be created through preferences, flexibility, visibility, transparency, and even shift-swapping.
Kronos Mobile now features the intuitive Employee Self-Service. Available from any iPhone or Android mobile device, this application allows employees to access the following:
Time Editing: Employees can add and edit punches, pay-codes, comments and notes.
Multiple Project Tracking: Employees can track and edit time against different projects via their mobile device. This includes the ability to approve and sign off on time-cards and edit duration, transfers, pay codes, comments, and notes.
HR/Payroll: Employees have access to all of their benefits, as well as their pay-stub history and landing pages.
The process of building a compelling environment for all employee demographics involves using the data gained from WFM software to “operationalize” employee engagement. Each employee has his/her own unique set of needs and expectations. Kronos mobile allows organizations to begin to transform their workforce's unique needs into actionable strategies to increase overall employee engagement including:
Better fatigue management through proactive scheduling and staffing
Accurate overtime projection based on real-time information
Highly effective schedules that align employee skills and experience
Operational flexibility through advanced mobile self-service capabilities
Fair and compliant application of workplace policies
Consistent and fair management of employee time off and absence.
A high-performance organization depends upon an engaged workforce where employees are highly motivated, more productive, and less likely to look for a job elsewhere.
The enhanced mobile features of Kronos are designed to empower a mobile workforce. In today’s workplace, reliable mobile access is more than a convenience: it is a necessity.
Kronos WFC Version 8.0, Workforce Ready, and Kronos Dimensions are all designed to help create the best employee experience possible. These new solutions go beyond the boundaries of the traditional approaches to workforce management. When implementing new advancements, it is important to consider the importance of a change management strategy. While new and improved software can create a better employee experience, it can also create the need for training or change management efforts within the organization.
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