Taking time off? Top tips for manager delegation in Workforce Central

September 1, 2020

Written By

David Dow

Solution Consultant

This article was written by David Dow in the Kronos EMEA Service Group. David runs “master class” courses in Workforce Accruals for other Kronos consultants and has been configuring Kronos workforce management solutions since 2002 and working with other time and attendance products since 1990.

Vacations are meant to be calming, enjoyable times when you can kick back, relax, and pursue the activities that make you happy. Sometimes this is easier said than done … how can you relax and turn off your work brain if you don’t have proper coverage while you’re away? Let’s talk about the delegation challenge.

The delegation challenge

When it’s time to take that well-earned rest, managers must ensure that the managementrelated duties of their workforce — everything from dealing with timecard exceptions and approving overtime to approving and signing off on timecards and more — are delegated to an appropriate colleague.

Sometimes higher-level managers with access rights to the view and who manage the same people in the system will assume responsibility for these tasks. Or special access may be granted to other managers or members of the payroll or HR department. Transferring responsibility is necessary to keep processes moving forward, but you should never share user log-in/sign-in credentials, in the name of compliance, security, and data auditing.

So, how do you ensure that workforce management delegation is accomplished correctly? Leverage the delegation feature in your Workforce Central® solution (version 6 and up).

Delegating authority

The delegation feature allows you to select the person

you’d like to appoint as the administrator for your employees’ timecards for a specific time period from a list of viable options. As the manager delegating your duties, you can decide what rights to assign to the chosen person standing in for you by assigning a role profile. A role profile is a combination of a function access profile and a display profile at the time of the delegation. The list you’re choosing from will include colleagues who already have a Workforce Manager™ license.

The manager to whom you are delegating authority (let’s call her Sheila in this case) will receive an email alert asking her to accept or decline the invitation as well as to review any important notes in the comment box.

Let’s say that Sheila will be in the office and is happy to help you out, so she accepts your request. When the delegation period starts, she’ll see a new option in her profile tab. She will now have access to your profile group in addition to her default option for Myself. This additional option will automatically be removed when the period of delegation ends.

How it works

All managers are assigned a delegate profile on their people record in their access profile tabs.

This is a list of people who have the right to manage your employee timecards. Delegate profiles are defined in common setup.

As a manager, you need a process profile as well, which is defined on your person tab.

When making a delegation request, you can specify a role profile, as previously mentioned. Typically, one process profile is defined for managers and one for a delegation administrator. The delegation administrator has the power to end or create delegation requests on a manager’s behalf. Returning to our example, you have delegated authority to Sheila, another manager, for two weeks. Sheila fully intended to cover for you, but she falls ill on the second day of your vacation. With her system access rights as the manager with responsibility for your employees’ timecards, Sheila can:

End the delegation you’ve assigned to her and find another manager to whom to delegate the responsibility.
Find a manager to delegate her responsibilities too while she’s out sick.

The process for an administrator is the same, but administrators must first specify that they are acting on behalf of a specific manager before performing any tasks.

Setting up delegation

Kronos must create process profiles and templates directly on the Workforce Central server. As a user, you can create a role profile, but role profiles are often created by Kronos. Delegate profiles are defined by the Kronos system administrator at your organization.

Note: It is possible to configure different delegate process and role profiles and to restrict the options available to each manager.

Final thoughts

What I have described is the best-practice method for dealing with timecards during a period of manager absence — and it certainly is for more than just vacation. Delegate authority when taking personal and mental health days or when attending conferences and online training. And while delegating authority is a helpful tool for you personally, it also plays a critical role in ensuring that the correct processes are followed and that your organization remains compliant with important rules and regulations.

The delegation feature is available for all versions of Workforce Central starting with version 6. Screenshots in this article will differ for versions starting with 8.1.6, but the process remains the same.

More delegation resources

For more information, Kronos KnowledgePass™ subscribers can check out the recorded Learning Live Setting Up Manager Delegation.

This recording of a KnowledgePass Learning Live session demonstrates the process of setting up the system to accommodate manager delegations so that managers can hand over their daily tasks to each other. It also demonstrates how delegations work. Note that the demonstrations in this recording use Workforce Central 8, but they apply to versions 6 and above. The approximate time to complete the course is 60 minutes.

You can also view the four-minute Delegating Authority Knowledge Nugget in the Knowledge Nuggets Library accessible from the Kronos KnowledgePass homepage.

Select Knowledge Nuggets Library on the homepage.
Select the Product How-To’s tab.
Scroll to find the Delegating Authority Knowledge Nugget.

Kronos Community articles

This article on delegating authority originally appeared here on the United Kingdom Kronos website.