With every new release of the Workforce Central® suite comes new features, functionality, and enhancements. Customers and their Kronos system administrators upgrading to the latest release to remain current with their support agreement may not be aware of some of the subtle, but hugely beneficial, new features that they could be using.
This article will highlight several of the new features in Accruals that may add enhanced value to your organization.
Accruals challenges before Workforce Central 8.1
Prior to Workforce Central 8.1, several accruals related actions were performed manually by:
- Using an HR interface or multiple numbers of accrual policies to achieve a required function
- Giving new starters an initial pro rata holiday entitlement based on their start date
- Rounding any grants on the first day of the year — due to an exact calculation of the full-time grant multiplied by the full-time equivalent (FTE) ratio
A new starter or a person on the first day of the holiday year could end up with 17.29 days — and taking 0.29 of a day can be hard!
Similarly, previous versions of Workforce Central had no rounding options with accruals in hours. One of the most difficult manual calculations was amending the balance when a person changed their weekly hours part way through the year.
New accruals features introduced in Workforce Central 8.1
Some of the enhanced accruals features introduced in Workforce Central 8.1 include the ability to:
- Round grants
- Give a pro rata grant based on date of hire
- Adjust a balance when a person changes their FTE or accrual profile
- Limit the carryover for part-time workers based on their FTE
- Adjust a balance based on a termination date
Rounding grants
With earlier versions of Workforce Central, a pro rata grant could leave an employee with 16.17 days or 153:17 hours and minutes. Grants can now be rounded up or down to the next whole or half day or to the hour!
Pro rata grants based on date of hire
The option now exists to provide pro rata grants, such as holiday, on the date of hire for employees and staff. Previously, this had to either be done manually or using the HR interface. Now, on the date of hire, a calculation can be performed to give the person a grant based on the number of days they will be working in the holiday year.
E.g., number of working days / 365 (or 366) x full-time grant x FTE ratio
The number of days includes the start day up to and including the last day of the holiday year.
Adjusting a balance when a person changes their FTE or accruals profile
When an employee changes their hours (up or down), the balance now can be automatically adjusted and rounded. Previously, this had to be either done manually or using the HR interface. The same applies if an employee is assigned a new accrual profile, whereby they receive an increased or reduced amount.
Limiting carryover for part-time workers based on their FTE
Take holidays as an example. There has always been a carryover amount, e.g., up to five days (i.e., one week) for a full-time employee, but this didn’t take into account employees who work part time just two days a week. These employees would have also been allowed to carry over five days. Prior to the new feature, which can limit the carryover based on the FTE, different accrual policies and profiles had to be created for employees working one, two, three, or four days per week. The same abilities apply to accruals based in hours, too.
Adjusting a balance based on a termination date
When an employee is given a termination date, the remaining balance can now be adjusted so that they can’t take more than they are entitled to before they leave. Controlling this was previously a manual exercise, and if employees took more than they had earned, it might be hard to make a recovery from final pay.
Find more information about accruals:
- Prorated Accruals: Using the Prorated Accruals feature with Workforce Central
- Kronos KnowledgePass training course: Configuring and Managing Accruals (log in to KnowledgePass, and use “ProductVersion: Absence Management” and “Configuring” as search filters)
Improving productivity, compliance, and best practices with new features
When upgrading to the latest version of Workforce Central, taking the time to understand and implement the new features and capabilities of the solution, versus current processes and configurations, can seriously improve productivity and compliance by reducing manual calculations and effort. In most cases, new features like the ones described above are quick to implement.
Solution configuration
Your people record import may already be calculating grants based on date of hire or changes to weekly hours, but this can now be done automatically with Workforce Central. Almost certainly any HR interface will update the FTE ratio on a people record, although this may be done manually, and the new features use this ratio. The FTE is date-effective so new weekly hours can be changed in advance but not historically.
Points to note:
- These features work on accruals based on a fixed year, calendar or otherwise
- Configuration and testing are required to turn these features on
- Features may require the assignment of a new accrual profile
- Any calculations will not be backdated — they apply from the next annual grant
The Kronos Service team is here to help
Kronos can review your existing accruals and make recommendations as to which can take advantage of these new features and deliver the benefits described above. We can also advise on the most appropriate implementation strategy.