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Digitalization Creates Smart HR Efficiencies

Gabriel Alvarado - Kronos
Latin America Vice President and General Manager

STORY INLINE POST

Fri, 09/01/2017 - 13:05

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Q: Kronos has a wide range of solutions and products. What is the company’s unique impact on the automotive industry?

A: Kronos has a positive impact in three different areas of the automotive industry. We focus on managing work productivity, as well as controlling and reducing labor costs. Our product collects information about the labor costs for every manufacturing process, which helps us discern smart ways to make these processes more cost-efficient. Reducing labor costs is not about firing workers but about correct and proper management. This can also relate to compliance with governmental regulations, including monitoring compliance with local work regulations and ensuring employees receive all the benefits negotiated by their union.

Most existing efficiency software only focuses on machinery, stocks and production lines and not human capital. Kronos works with people and helps reduce those situations in which they feel they are not being fairly treated and or that other employees receive preferential treatment. We support an organizational culture, recognizing that every company has different processes and policies defined by its human resources department. Unfortunately, those processes can become simply part of the company’s guidelines and are never used or followed because supervisors and department heads tend to apply their own rules. This creates a segmented work culture across teams. In these cases, we create a corporate governing board to provide consistency in the decision-making process, whether by supervisors, heads of departments or company directors.

Q: How does Kronos help deal with high staff turnover?

A: In Kronos, we believe that for a company to succeed, employees must be engaged, committed to their work and emotionally attached to the company. Companies are not made up of products or machinery but of people. To build commitment to the organization, our Workforce Institute analyzes a company’s team dynamics. We have deduced that one of the reasons for staff turnover is that employees tend to feel they are treated unfairly. Kronos’ software takes this into consideration, such as whether team members prefer working the morning or the evening shift, or if they are open to working on Saturdays. Taking personal preferences into consideration helps increase productivity. Kronos specifically contributes by reducing dynamics that damage this, creating consistency in processes and fostering a competitive environment in which employees are paid fairly.

Mexican work culture is more focused on arrival and departure times than productivity itself. We create an employee skills profile that includes information regarding how productive employees are, their work quality, their skills and certifications. The algorithm can assign workers to tasks they are most suited to, considering their personal preferences.

Q: How does Kronos contribute to the digitalization process regarding human capital?

A: I like to think of Kronos’ work in layers. First, we remove the payroll’s manual control. We guarantee perfect paychecks, ensuring employees are paid correctly. This is basic but it is important for employees when done right. Secondly, we optimize the workforce by assigning the right person to the right task at the right time. Thirdly, we focus on providing financial intelligence on a series of costs related to the lack of productivity. For instance, when OEMs do not have the necessary parts and components, halting a production line can cost them thousands of dollars. When this happens, we mitigate all idle time by implementing a backup plan.

The last part is related to analytics. We create dashboards so clients have on-screen real-time business indicators. This tool automates decisions, processes, productivity and corporate-government tasks. We keep an eye out for ways to complement the functionality of our services so we recently acquired Datamatics Management Services, which has provided us with data analytics tools. Having invested in Cloud services, we now have information from over 20,000 clients saved there. This provides us with data to discern and convey practices that generate further value.

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