Irving Independent School District
Irving Independent School District, based in Irving, Texas, has
more than 29,000 students in its 30 schools. Irving ISD is a K-12
school system with more than 3,800 employees, ranging from teachers
to food service workers, custodial staff, and maintenance workers.
Overcoming inefficiencies through automation
Faced with a growing number of students and employees, Irving ISD needed to upgrade its time and attendance system. Irving ISD used to rely on a paper-based system to track and pay its 600 hourly employees within its food services, custodial, and maintenance departments and found that the system was inefficient and not at all cost-effective.
As it continued to grow, Irving ISD realized that its time and attendance system would have to grow with it.
For Irving ISD, expansion meant automation. Debbie Cabrera, the director of finance for Irving ISD, recalls how its old system used to operate. "Our supervisors had to manually inspect and approve all employee timesheets for their departments," she said, "which in some cases meant reviewing hundreds of timesheets before signing off on them. This process was extremely time-consuming, labor-intensive, and very susceptible to errors."
In addition to the inefficiencies, Irving ISD suspected that its system might be wasteful. Cabrera says, "There was some evidence that we might have been overpaying some employees as a result of not being able to track their hours accurately. This led us to believe that an automated time and attendance system would eliminate these inefficiencies and allow us to save money along the way." These benefits were only the beginning.
Swiping for success
Irving ISD selected Kronos' Timekeeper Central™ application
for automation process because of Kronos' track record and because
of Cabrera's experience implementing Timekeeper®
Central while at her previous school. The first step in the rollout
process was to install the Timekeeper terminals, eliminating the
need for paper timesheets and schedules. Irving ISD installed a
total of 35 Timekeeper terminals at the school and maintenance facilities
and began to see improvements almost immediately.
To sign in and out, employees simply swipe a bar-coded ID badge through their terminal. Cabrera said, "With the Timekeeper terminals, we have access to real-time information that is extremely easy to use and readily available to everyone in the payroll process. Instead of reviewing an overwhelming amount of timesheets and checking them against employee schedules, supervisors simply review the data, check exceptions, and authorize the payroll. Our supervisors are now free to spend more time focusing on what's important to us and to them — providing quality services and a safe environment for the students."
System benefits did not stop there. Supervisors and other employees were quick to envision a new range of possibilities that the terminals could be used for, and additional benefits quickly added up.
"A number of our supervisors and managers made requests to expand the functionality of the terminals," says Cabrera. "It was great to see so much interest and system buy-in from them.
"Their suggestions led to increased functionality that provided us with a new range of solutions that we hadn't even envisioned."
As an example, Cabrera cites a situation where the terminals' functionality has increased, giving Irving ISD a better way to handle once-complex employee pay changes. "We run a banquet service that takes place immediately before or after the normal work day shift," Cabrera said. "Employees who work in this catering shift are paid at a rate which is one and half times their regular pay. These employees simply swipe their badge at their terminal, enter a pre-set activity code, and are immediately clocked in at this new rate. And, for security, this data is accessible to our supervisors so they can easily view it for accuracy."
Cabrera says that the pre-set function keys and activity codes make life much easier for her and her staff in other instances, too. "Missed punches, canceling automatic meal deductions, absent employees, or tracking time and wages for those employees who may work at different rates were once complicated procedures involving manual inspection and authorization," she says. "Now they are all handled with the push of a button. We have a range of function keys that can be entered by either the employee or the supervisor and they really have made our lives easier." By implementing Timekeeper Central and maximizing the use of its functionality, Irving ISD has successfully automated its time and attendance systems and transformed itself into a newly efficient, productive, and cost-effective organization.
"We're thrilled with the results we've achieved — results that never would have been possible without Kronos solutions."
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