Exclusive: Tractor Supply, Aztec Shops improve HR with Kronos tech

Las Vegas –- At the recent KronosWorks 2014 conference in Las Vegas, clients across a variety of industries spoke about how they use Kronos solutions to better perform a variety of human resources and workforce management tasks.



Two retailers who shared their experiences were Tractor Supply Company and Aztec Shops Ltd., a non-profit corporation that provides services including operation of the bookstore and dining services on the San Diego State University campus.



Following is a brief recap of each company’s experience with Kronos.



Tim Grunes, IT manager at Tractor Supply, said his company selected Kronos absece management software to schedule employee leaves of absence and ensure compliance with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). He said Tractor Supply could have done a better job in preparing for the implementation.



“We didn’t tell Kronos we were dealing with different states, types of employees and pay practices,” said Grunes. “The human resources management team thought it would be one-click, automatic leave of absence management. But there is a lot of human interaction even with software. We also over-engineered the software to solve every problem, which made the project a behemoth.”



However, Tractor Supply eventually worked through these and other issues, resulting in a streamlined process for managing leaves of absence. Online reporting has been improved and training for administrators is easier. In addition, average leave processing time has been reduced 25% and Tractor Supply is now in 100% compliance with all state leave of absence laws.



In an exclusive interview with Chain Store Age, Leah Messenger, project/payroll manager for Aztec Shops, said switching from a legacy scheduling system to Kronos enabled Aztec Shops to reduce scheduling shifts at the campus bookstore from a six-week process to something that only takes from a few days to as little as a few hours. By upgrading to Kronos 5.2 (and now cloud-based Kronos 6.2 with an upgrade to Kronos 7.0 planned for later in November), the retailer was also able to turn enrolling for direct deposit payroll into a self-service process and streamline time and attendance tracking.



“With the legacy system, the employee didn’t see the time cards,” said Messenger. “There was rampant buddy punching. Now we have biometric time clocks and employees and managers are required to approve timecards.”

Automated time and attendance tracking also lets Aztec Shops meet Californiua’s stringent “attestation” requiements for recording when employees take mandated breaks and lunch periods.



“It lets the courts know we’re doing our due diligence,” said Messenger.