Bowlplex selects Kronos to manage annualised hours contracts

18 January 2007: Bowling and leisure organisation Bowlplex has selected Kronos Incorporated to more effectively manage its workforce at the company's 16 entertainment outlets across the UK. The Kronos Workforce Central suite will allow Bowlplex to monitor the annualised hours scheme for managers recently introduced by the company. Bowlplex will benefit from a bespoke payroll interface that will link the Kronos data to the company's Prolog payroll system.

The Kronos solution will replace Bowlplex's current manual system for managing employee time and attendance, which is labour intensive and prone to error. They will be able to eliminate manual time sheets completed at site level, which are then input in to Excel before they are uploaded into the payroll system. Kronos will now manage all attendance records centrally before passing the data directly to the company's payroll system.

"By automating the collection of working hours data and feeding the information directly into our payroll system, we expect to reduce the number of payroll errors significantly, and at the same time benefit from excellent management information on such things as absence levels and trends," comments Jane Jarvis, HR Manager, Bowlplex. She continues, "We have also recently introduced an annualised hours scheme for our managers — the complexity of which would be impossible to manage without the functionality within Kronos."

Bowlplex managers are contracted to work a set number of hours per annum. Hours are split into several areas such as duty hours, management hours and banked hours, and rotas are drawn up for a 12 month period. Kronos monitors the hours worked during each shift and automatically moves time in and out of the banked hours balance when a manager works either over or under the hours specified for a shift.

"The selection of Kronos followed an extensive evaluation of a number of systems and we found that Kronos provided the best match with our requirements, particularly in its ability to manage our complex annualised hours scheme," said Jane Jarvis.

Keith Statham, Managing Director of Kronos Systems comments, "Bowlplex is clearly demonstrating that the Kronos solution has the flexibility to manage a variety of different contracts within the same organisation, supporting their objective of providing staff with flexible working arrangements. Many organisations in the UK are looking at flexible working options and at Kronos we aim to ensure that flexible contracts are simple to monitor and manage."

About Kronos

Kronos Incorporated empowers organisations around the world to effectively manage their workforce. At Kronos, we are experts who are solely focused on delivering software and services that enable organisations to reduce costs, increase productivity, improve employee satisfaction, and ultimately enhance the level of service they provide. Kronos serves customers in more than 50 countries through its network of offices, subsidiaries, and distributors. Widely recognised as a market and thought leader in managing the workforce, Kronos has unrivalled reach with more than 30 million people using a Kronos solution every day. Learn more about Kronos at www.kronos.com/uk.