Hi-Lex Cable Systems
Hi-Lex invests in Kronos system for employee scheduling and time management
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About Hi-Lex
Global automotive parts manufacturer, Hi-Lex Cable Systems supplies automotive components to the world's leading car manufacturers, including Nissan, Ford, Volvo and Land Rover. The company's European Headquarters is based in Port Talbot, where employees use the Kronos workforce management system, Kronos Workforce Central, to record employees' working hours.
Kronos at Hi-Lex
Hi-Lex have been Kronos users since 2004, having previously used a DCS time management system. Following the Kronos acquisition of DCS in 2002, the company upgraded its system in order to automate some of the more manual processes it still had and to move to Workforce Timekeeper which had the additional functionality required
to manage staff schedules. Selecting Kronos was straightforward according to Mandy Armstrong, "We knew Kronos to be the world leader in the area of time and attendance and, following an excellent product demonstration, we were confident that the system would more than meet our needs."
Project scope
Hi-Lex needed to find a way to reduce payroll administration, ensure payroll accuracy, simplify staff scheduling and pro-actively manage absence, lateness and overtime. The existing DCS time and attendance system required too many manual workarounds, was time consuming to administrate and resulted in a higher than acceptable number of payroll errors.
"The Kronos system is intuitive to use, has excellent reporting capabilities and is reducing the time we spend managing staff schedules. I haven't really found anything that Kronos can't do." Mandy Armstrong (MIS), Hi-Lex Cable Systems
Hi-Lex chose Kronos Workforce Central with biometric terminals to fully automate staff time recording and manage staff work schedules.
Project benefits
Reduction in time spent on payroll administration
Where previously the hours-worked data was transferred manually into Excel, manipulated and then manually keyed into payroll, Kronos now automates the process through to the payroll system. It now takes a few minutes each week to prepare the payroll for entry – where previously it was taking a full day each week. The payroll team now have more time to provide payroll analysis on such things as absence trends, overtime worked and attendance records.
Biometrics improved clocking errors
The company had been experiencing high levels of clocking errors before the biometric system was installed, with forgotten badges being the typical excuse for missed clockings. "A typical 3 month period would result in up to 700 mis-clockings – each of which needed to be investigated by the business. Since the biometric system has been in place, clocking errors are as low as two per week," explained Mandy Armstrong.
Improved staff scheduling
Rotating staff shift patterns are all managed by Kronos to ensure that the system knows when employees are expected to be at work. In a busy manufacturing environment, production schedules, and therefore working schedules, are likely to change at short notice. Previously, it was necessary to manually change every employee schedule in the system, but Kronos enables large groups to be rescheduled in the system in a matter of minutes, saving time and improving accuracy.
Visibility of Kronos data to team leaders
Team leaders can now access the Kronos data to track their own employees' absence, overtime and holiday entitlement, with the result that employees no longer have to approach the payroll team for day-to-day information.
Pro-active staff management with real-time availability of information
Kronos now provides real-time alerts directly to the managers' desktops to inform them when staff have either arrived at work late or not arrived at all. The manager can then pro-actively handle the situation with the late employee or call in another employee to cover a staff shortage. The organisation also has weekly/monthly overtime budgets to monitor. To enable managers to do this accurately, Kronos provides a daily overtime report for the previous day's worked overtime, enabling each team to monitor and manage its own overtime budget.
Simple solution to monitor sick pay and holiday entitlement
Using the Kronos accruals package, Hi-Lex is able to track sick days and leave against an individual’s entitlement, and the Kronos system will not allow employees to exceed their agreed entitlement. Previously, an employee’s paper-based holiday or sick card would have to be updated and used to manually calculate any days taken.
Tighter control over back to work documents
Hi-Lex has a return to work interview process which has been highly effective in reducing absence. The process involves the completion of a return to work interview form and the company uses the Kronos system to record and monitor the completion of the documentation. Since using Kronos to perform this function, the control process for completing the form has improved by 50% when measured against time taken to complete before using Kronos – as Kronos enables the company to monitor, chase and control the document completion.
Provides the benefits of an HR system
"Kronos provides us with an easy to use system that provides us with most of the employee analysis that we require at Hi-Lex. It's a solid system requiring little management and is widely and pro-actively used across all departments to provide us with business critical employee information," concluded Mandy Armstrong. Hi-Lex also uses the Kronos system to manage HR policies and all staff HR information is held within Kronos. For example, excellent attendance is rewarded with an attendance bonus – the attendance data is taken directly from the Kronos system. Kronos also stores information on such things as verbal and written warnings, and when written warnings are about to expire.