WFR: all you'll ever need
Updated June 09, 2020

WFR: all you'll ever need

Aaron Ward | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Kronos Workforce Ready

We use Kronos Workforce Ready for all of our employees. Everyone either swipes at a clock or punches in on a computer/phone/tablet. WFR tracks time towards grants, contractual employee hours per pay period, enforces time off for benefited employees and ensures we are in compliance with regulations. WFR is the 3rd version of Kronos we have been on in my 17 years at WCPS.

Pros

  • Flexible to our employee diversity.
  • Easy to use from an employees view.
  • Takes away back end system issues by being in the cloud.

Cons

  • Being in a shared environment, customization is not allowed.
  • Somewhat slow at times because of browser technology (compared to WFC we had on-site).
  • Implementation CANNOT be rushed through.
  • Put punching in the hand/pocket of every employee we have. No time clocks necessary. No add on pricing to let every employee use mobile.
  • Helped our managers be able to manage from home/off-site.
  • Exporting ANY REPORT to Excel is a great break through for managers.
TOTALLY head-n-shoulders above the competition. This is why we are on our 3rd version of Kronos & don't plan on moving anytime soon. Customer support (KGS) is fast, professional, knowledgeable, and thorough. The documentation of the product is incredible. Online training resources are VAST.
We have 4 different types of employees and each is very unique in how we track their time. WFR was able to handle each one remarkably. The level of detail in which you can customize pay rules, work flows, time off requests, etc. is handled well. The user interface is simple for all levels of users.
WFR has everything I need (and more) to do my job easily. Kronos has really listened to the user community and made the program intuitive for users and administrators. Adding/removing fields from screens (reports) is super easy. Making mass changes to employees is awesome. We have numerous data imports and exports getting data from our other systems. WFR is very integrate-able which helps keep information synced across multiple systems.
The Kronos user community can answer questions w/o having to go to support. Very helpful & willing to share knowledge. Training classes offered during our transition were helpful and well lead. WFR internal documentation is very detailed and clearly laid out with nice visuals and step-by-step instructions. The Kronosworks conference was the best conference I've ever attended. First-hand access to product line managers and industry experts was amazing.
Be prepared to make your business processes match what WFR does & not vice versa. WFR is capable of handling nearly everything we can throw at it with some tweaks to our processes. Some things can be kind of customized but the days of paying for it the way you want it are gone, which does save you when it is time to upgrade versions/releases.

UKG Ready Feature Ratings

Employee demographic data
9
Employment history
Not Rated
Job profiles and administration
Not Rated
Workflow for transfers, promotions, pay raises, etc.
Not Rated
Organizational charting
Not Rated
Organization and location management
Not Rated
Compliance data (COBRA, OSHA, etc.)
Not Rated
Pay calculation
9
Support for external payroll vendors
9
Off-cycle/On-Demand payment
Not Rated
Benefit plan administration
Not Rated
Direct deposit files
Not Rated
Salary revision and increment management
Not Rated
Approval workflow
8
Balance details
8
Annual carry-forward and encashment
Not Rated
View and generate pay and benefit information
Not Rated
Update personal information
Not Rated
View job history
Not Rated
View company policy documentation
Not Rated
Tracking of all physical assets
Not Rated
Not Rated
Report builder
Not Rated
Pre-built reports
Not Rated
Performance plans
Not Rated
Performance improvement plans
Not Rated
Review status tracking
Not Rated
Review reminders
Not Rated
Multiple review frequency
Not Rated
Create succession plans/pools
Not Rated
Not Rated
New hire portal
Not Rated
Manager tracking tools
Not Rated
Individual goal setting
Not Rated
Performance tracking
Not Rated
Job Requisition Management
Not Rated
Company Website Posting
Not Rated
Publish to Social Media
Not Rated
Job Search Site Posting
Not Rated
Duplicate Candidate Prevention
Not Rated
Applicant Tracking
Not Rated
Notifications and Alerts
Not Rated

Using Kronos Workforce Ready

3750 - We are a K12. Our users range from the Superintendent, teachers, office staff, custodians, maintenance workers, bus drivers, substitutes, IT, HR, Payroll.
2 - Me (programmer/analyst) and the Payroll manager support, setup, implement, process pay, etc. in WFR. It is very busy at peak pay & approval times each month.
  • Paying hourly staff
  • Tracking time off for benefited staff
  • Paying substitutes
  • Transferring the above 3 to our ERP system
  • Connecting our bus tracking system (Zonar) to WFR. Drivers punch on the bus software & those punches are imported directly into WFR.
  • Importing substitute working days from Absence Management into WFR
  • Importing leave balances that are calculated in our ERP into WFR
  • Importing teacher time off from Absence Management into WFR
  • LOA module for FMLA compliance
  • Tracking hours worked to Grant Funds
  • Allowing ALL staff to punch with mobile & enforcing geo-fencing
WFR has been able to meet our regular functionality and our special cases within the "out of the box" product. Thus far it is great!

Evaluating Kronos Workforce Ready and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Prior Experience with the Product
  • Existing Relationship with the Vendor
  • Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
Product Features - Mobile application for all employees, Single Sign On, LOA module, cloud hosting.
We saw a demo & immediately knew it would work for our district. No other applications were considered because we already had a relationship with Kronos.

Kronos Workforce Ready Implementation

DO NOT attempt to go live too quickly. Sales sold us on 100 days from contract signing was doable. We postponed go live 3 times because everything was not ready. We did not have enough time document the new functionality & train end users. Almost 3 months later we are still working through export issues, minor setup issues, adequate time for system admins to get comfortable with the system.
  • Implemented in-house
  • Third-party professional services
Sability
Yes - Current system analysis/exploration
Discussion of what we are attempting to accomplish
Module setup by vendor
User testing/reporting issues
Pre-go live test
Go live
Post go live follow up
Product Technical Account Manager transition
Change management was minimal - A few processes were updated due to the way WFR works. We used the migration as "the reason" to make changes to procedures that were old or just wrong.
  • Lack of testing by our end users.
  • Time to document step by step procedures.
  • Lack of access to the implementation consultant after go live.

Kronos Workforce Ready Training

  • Online training
  • in-person training
Our in-person training was a hybrid. Live online training with an instructor. They were very knowledgeable of the product & the area they were training on. I asked several specific questions and if they didn't know the answer immediately they followed up after class.
Lots & lots of training available. Timing was wrong for our organization. We had lengthy down time in the beginning while the implementation consultant setup our system. We did online training then. Difficult to train on a generic system setup that isn't your industry and hard to understand what you are learning how to do w/o actually being in your system. Online training was well documented and the instructors were very knowledgeable.
The system is very intuitive if you use many web applications. There is a VAST library of learning materials & videos available for self paced learning.

Configuring Kronos Workforce Ready

WFR is extremely configurable. From imports to exports, how punches are interrupted, how to calculate time, pay rules, time off requests are good but could use more personal customization.
No, we followed the implementation teams guidelines.
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface - With the help of the product specialist we customized the user dashboard with lots of helpful information and almost a 1-stop-shop ability to do everything from one screen. Thus far is has been very helpful to our end users.
No - the product does not support adding custom code
We were able to configure reports to our specifications. Most fields are accessible & you can create a custom field (needed help of the consultant).

Kronos Workforce Ready Support

ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
We have recently upgraded to WFR. The implementation process was well managed. During our conversion from the implementation team to KGS we had a 4 week window of time where we met with a Kronos product support person who specifically reviewed all the key areas of WFR to ensure we were comfortable with the product & how the setup works. It was a very good transition.

Using Kronos Workforce Ready

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • New User Interface (UI) is very customizable and displays the employees information clearly.
  • Data imports are easy to find documentation for. Import just about anything in the system.
  • Exporting data from ANY report is incredibly easy. Accountants & Managers LOVE this feature.
  • Automated/scheduled imports take some help to setup.
  • Sometimes the amount of customization in the security setup can be overwhelming to know what setting will do what.
Yes - Mobile app interface is identical to the web browser interface. This is a brilliant concept. It allows users to NOT HAVE TO learn 2 ways to use the system. Makes users feel comfortable to use Kronos on any platform.
WFR is very customizable. Only a few things are off limits....surprisingly the most basic screen, the employee time sheet, IS NOT able to be changed. Almost every screen/report users can add/remove fields. Menu setup is fairly easy with the exception multiple versions of a report CANNOT be directly linked to. They are supposed to be updating this in a future release but at the moment it is cumbersome for users to switch to different versions of the report.

Kronos Workforce Ready Reliability

Thus far we are able to add as many users as necessary, implement 3 different bargaining units, 5 different types of user groups. Very flexible.
The system seems very stable. Being hosted in the cloud, we are vulnerable to internet speeds and busy times. The system has been down a couple times over the 3 months we have been live, but Kronos resolved the issues very quickly. To have access from a desktop, tablet, time clock, or phone app is one of the best features....users have almost NO REASON they can't clock in.
We have noticed only a few slow page loading issues while being live on WFR. Most pages load as fast or faster than our in-house hosted systems.

Integrating Kronos Workforce Ready

Pretty easy to setup an import. WFR provides easy to understand (very detailed) templates you can review before setting up the import file.
  • PowerSchool BusinessPlus (ERP)
  • Absence Management (Frontline)
With our ERP system we upload employee information, hourly employee tasks, & track work to non-paid tasks (like maintenance jobs). From Absence Management (substitute system) we import daily absences & substitute job information. If you can get the data into a .csv format, WFR can import it.
  • No additional integrations planned at this time.
No additional integrations planned at this time.
  • File import/export
  • Single Signon
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
We worked with our integration consultant to setup several imports & exports. Any report can be exported to .csv or .xls so if you can make the screen look like you want, you just made a basic export. Our school district easily setup Single Sign on with WFR. We employed Kronos serves to write an API integration with a 3rd party system.
Definitely work with KGS or a consultant before attempting an import interface. Since this is hosted, rolling back the database is out of the question.

Relationship with Kronos Incorporated

Kronos was very attentive of our need to reduce cost unless it came with a solution that gave us more. Moving to WFR reduced our in house servers while gaining functionality / modules. Sales was quick to answer all our questions. They connected us with several other K12's to hear how they were using WFR.
Our sales rep left after we signed. Then we were bounced between 2-3 others before our area rep was hired. The process was OK, but not ideal. Since then our rep has been attentive but not pushy....maybe a little less active in the process than I'd liked. We didn't get exactly what we were sold/demo'd. The implementation team has done their best to make it work.
I was not involved in the contract signing.
Try to get full access to a test environment to play around with how your situations will work on WFR. Speak to several references, try to find ones in your state so you know they are dealing with the same type workforce / problems / issues on a day to day basis.

Upgrading Kronos Workforce Ready

Yes - No problems that we are aware of. Some minor changes to the dashboard layout that we didn't anticipate. There was a lot of information on the Kronos Community site but I didn't have time to review everything.
  • Not sure. The product seems relatively the same.

Comments

More Reviews of UKG Ready