The Kronos User Spotlight program is designed to discover and connect people who use Kronos regularly in their day-to-day jobs. Today, we hear from Lisa Leslie of Hydro-Gear — a Workforce Ready™ customer.
Lisa’s experience with Kronos has given her a wealth of knowledge on several topics. Read on for a few of Lisa’s favorite things about Kronos.
Meet Lisa Leslie
| Name: | Lisa Leslie |
| Company: | Hydro-Gear |
| Product: | Workforce Ready |
| Role: | Employee Services Strategic Specialist |
| Experience with Kronos: | Two years |
| Kronos Community Name: | lleslie05922 |
Lisa completed our Kronos User Spotlight interview form, and here’s what she had to share.
Product features and functionality: What Lisa is most excited about
Because I’m on the HR side and using Workforce Ready, these are a couple of my favorite things:
- Job Defaults — We reduced new employee profile creation time by assigning defaults to jobs- security, points, holiday, accrual, benefits, labor type, timesheet, paycalc, standard workday, etc. We created location-specific titles so we could also default the location. This increases velocity and reduces errors in entering new employees or even job changes. As soon as you select the job title, all defaults populate!
- Benefit Enrollments — Benefit enrollments are a great feature as well. We have set those up to provide all information required by our benefit partners so we can send over secure file feeds to further reduce errors. We moved our enrollment fully online within Kronos, so the paper forms have been eliminated.
Resources: What Lisa can’t live without
Custom Columns — When you send a report that doesn’t have the end goal information (ex., how many days passed from the time the requisition was posted to today?), the managers must calculate that information in Excel after receiving the report. Through custom columns, you can create the information that isn’t a readily available column in Kronos. For example, if phone numbers don’t have the same format, use a custom column to correct that. Without custom columns, it would not have been possible to set up the benefit vendor file feeds we use.
Custom Filters — Custom filters allow the use of multiple filters! This makes head-count reporting amazingly accurate. In regular reporting, the terminated date field is blank so you can’t filter for the terminated date AND filter for a specific date range of terminations at the same time. With the custom filter, that IS possible.
Kronites — If I need a custom column but cannot calculate it correctly, I ask and the Kronites are there to help! They introduced me to custom filters!
Tips and tricks: Advice from Lisa
Be creative! You can personalize Kronos for your company and make positive changes. Have a few test employees and don’t be afraid to utilize them. For example, we recently needed a way to ask COVID-19 questions of our timeclock employees. So, using a test employee, I added a new cost center and assigned her cloned timesheet, paycalc, and points profiles with the changes we needed. I used a backup timeclock and tested the result. After a few tweaks, we implemented it. It’s now required for timeclock employees to answer the questions, and we are able to easily report their responses. For our non-timeclock employees, we utilized the Workflow Questionnaires. We have to individually assign them, as mass assigning/selecting isn’t available, but it is a simple tool to collect that information, easily report on it, and have notifications sent to HR if there is a potential issue. We even have follow-up email notifications sent to the employee.
Utilize the Kronos support team to the fullest extent. Lean on the Kronites in the Community and enter cases with the KGS team when there is an issue.
If you are able to, make sure you attend a customer conference like the annual user conference or a Kronos Huddle. My photo was taken at a Kronos event for the manufacturing sector during the evening networking section at the Shedd Aquarium. You can ask folks at Kronos Incorporated for their expertise and network with them as well!
Just for fun: Lisa’s claims to fame
I’m not an IT expert. I used Kronos at a prior company to enter my own time for two years. After four years, I started my current position, which is focused on employee benefits. As a Kronos admin, I’ve leaned on the community, I’ve paid attention to our implementation team for new modules, and I’ve asked questions to learn how the system works. I’m also very stubborn, so when I know there’s a possibility of using the system, I just keep testing until I get the desired end result. You don’t have to be a programming genius. You just must be willing to learn and try new things!
Thank you, Lisa, for sharing your wisdom!
Will you, the reader, be the next in the spotlight? I hope you’ll consider filling out our interview form so that we can highlight your expertise and help other Kronos users know you as well.
Please feel free to connect with Lisa via private message in Kronos Community.
Lisa is a member of Kronos Insiders, the Kronos customer advocacy program that provides the opportunity to get connected, get smarter, and get recognized through member-only engagements with other Kronos customers and Kronos experts. Connect with like-minded peers, share your stories, and exchange best practices. Interested in becoming a Kronos Insider? Learn more here.