Canton City Auditor's Office
The Canton, Ohio City Auditor's Office is a government agency
with more than 1,200 employees, six labor contracts, seven elected
entities, and five boards and commissions — representing everyone
from elected officials to city safety workers.
Until 1999, Canton City relied on antiquated systems for collecting
employee labor data, applying pay rules, and processing payroll
for its diverse workforce. These cumbersome, non-integrated systems
were highly inefficient, labor-intensive, and not Y2K-compliant.
In addition, pay rules were often applied differently across departments,
leading to inconsistencies and errors in payroll.
Canton City carefully considered its options and selected and implemented
Kronos' Workforce Timekeeper™ software, part of the powerful
Workforce Central solution, and its Timekeeper®
data collection terminals. The results have been significant —
a streamlined payroll process, less administrative burden for managers,
increased accuracy, and improved reliability.
The results were so significant, in fact, that Kronos presented Canton City Auditor's Office with a Best Practices Award for its innovative approach to adopting a system for all employees and for demonstrating efficient management of taxpayer money by reducing costs.
Kronos' Best Practices Awards are presented annually to those organizations that have achieved excellence in the application of labor management technology.
Lack of integrated systems presents many challenges
In 1999, Canton City Auditor's Office decided to replace its legacy
time collection systems with a more efficient automated system.
Years of stagnation left the city with systems that were not Y2K-compliant
and payroll procedures that were labor-intensive, time-consuming,
and error-prone. Anita Henderson, Canton City's deputy auditor,
remembers just how difficult things used to be. "To administer
payroll, our human resources department had to edit punches or manually
enter all payroll transactions on our timekeeping system,"
she recalls. "Then the Auditor's Office staff had to re-process,
re-audit, and in many cases, re-enter these transactions on the
payroll system." Canton City's redundant time collection and
payroll efforts required far too much time and effort on the part
of administrators.
Canton City's MIS team faced challenges too. "Our MIS department
was investing too much time attempting to synchronize the calculations
and payroll rules between HR and the Auditor's Office,"
Ms. Henderson says. "This cumbersome manual process led to
inaccuracies in payroll, miscommunications between departments,
inconsistencies in the application of pay rules, and the isolation of
department managers from workforce management."
And that wasn't all. According to Ms. Henderson, additional
problems arose when elected officials and department heads not
under the jurisdiction of the mayor avoided the legacy timekeeping
system altogether. "Certain departments were able to bypass the
system, and employees in these departments submitted handwritten
payroll information directly to the Auditor's Office," she remembers.
"The final straw was when police unions filed and won a lawsuit
based upon records from that legacy timekeeping system. As a result,
the police and fire units were no longer required to use that system."
Canton City needed a single labor management solution that could
automate its time and attendance and payroll systems and eliminate
the need for its manual procedures.
Workforce Timekeeper: A change for the better
In 1999, faced with Y2K compliance issues, Canton City selected Kronos Workforce
Timekeeper software because of its ability to automate the collection of time
and attendance data and apply standardized pay rules — automatically and consistently across the entire organization. Another key selling point was the fact that Workforce Timekeeper could interface directly to Canton City's payroll system, a step that saved considerable time and effort and resulted in more accurate paychecks for
employees. Kronos' flexibility in data collection methods also led to Canton City's
decision.
Implementing Workforce Timekeeper led to immediate and
significant benefits. "The biggest improvement is that we've
gained a single, comprehensive data collection system because
this system provides a single point-of-entry for each payroll
transaction," says Ms. Henderson. Employees submit time and
attendance data just by swiping in or out of a Kronos Timekeeper
terminal or by utilizing Kronos' default scheduling feature. It's
fast, and it's accurate. No more paper timesheets. No more
manual data entry. And even better, Canton City's redundant
labor management efforts are gone forever.
"Workforce Timekeeper is now used by all city employees,
including elected jurisdictions, departments, and safety workers,
and it has helped us meet the diverse needs of our departments,"
she states. "In fact, departments once reluctant to use our legacy
system quickly abandoned their handwritten payroll approach
when they saw the power and efficiency of the Kronos system."
Diverse workforce presents a challenge in standardizing pay rules
"Implementing Workforce Timekeeper forced us to evaluate, define, and document
our payroll rules and policies for the first time," Ms. Henderson remembers.
"Although mid-sized in number, defining our payroll practices was challenging
from a qualitative, if not a quantitative, perspective. Establishing guidelines
for accurate interpretation between and within six labor contracts, seven elected
entities, and five boards and commissions was a formidable task. Workforce Timekeeper
made us realize that standardizing pay rules and applying them uniformly was essential
to improving our business model."
Part of this success is attributable to Workforce Timekeeper
software's calculation engine, which applies Canton City's
specific pay rules to employee time and attendance labor data
and automatically routes this information directly to its payroll
system. This seamless interface enabled Canton City to meet
one important business objective: fully integrated applications.
"We are very proud to have accomplished this goal, which would
not have been possible without Kronos," says Ms. Henderson.
She reports that this solution has freed employees' time, and
as a result, Canton City is now redirecting its workforce to
higher level auditing tasks and monitoring the standardized
payroll rules.
Improved workforce management
Besides increasing data accuracy and making the entire process more efficient,
Workforce Timekeeper software is helping improve another important area — workforce
productivity. Ms. Henderson explains, "Capturing payroll entries at the department
of origin has significantly increased the role of department managers in the payroll
administration process in several ways. First, it increases managers' awareness
of employee activities; second, it provides the necessary tools department managers
need for workforce labor trend analysis, such as attendance, tardiness, and pattern
abuse." Simply stated, Workforce Timekeeper has given Canton City's managers
the tools they need to better manage their workforce.
As it looks to the future, Canton City would like to continue
to improve its workforce management. Future plans include
leveraging the Kronos system for additional labor cost analysis
tools, reports for upper level management, and deployment of
the Kronos system to all other city departments.
Elimination of manual and redundant labor management
systems. The definition and application of standard pay rules.
Improved efficiency and productivity. All of these benefits
enabled the Canton City Auditor's Office to focus on what was
most important — the taxpayers' money. "In government, ROI
means efficient management of taxpayer money by providing
maximum services in the most cost-efficient manner possible,"
says Ms. Henderson. "Workforce Timekeeper enabled us to
realize that objective."
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