InTouch can also display training videos or news headlines and place a phone call to a human resources staffer if a worker needs a human response.
And businesses can create custom software apps tailored to their specific needs.
“It’s much more than a clock,’’ said Aron Ain, Kronos’s chief executive. “We really think we’ve invented something here that’s going to take an everyday business practice and revolutionize it.’’
Kronos specializes in “workforce management,’’ the business of ensuring that workers do their jobs and get the pay and benefits they deserve. The company introduced the first computer-controlled time clock in 1979. Today, it employs 3,200 people worldwide, with 1,000 of them in Massachusetts, and serves half of Fortune magazine’s 1,000 largest US companies.
InTouch is the company’s first new time clock design in a decade, but time clocks generate only one-third of Kronos’s revenue. The rest comes from the software that runs the clocks, which must be tailored to the thousands of companies that use Kronos products.
Workforce Central, the company’s management software, lets personnel managers track crucial variables like vacations, sick time, and overtime. The software also helps businesses comply with local, state, and federal labor laws and with union contracts.
Like many other software companies, Kronos is shifting to the Internet cloud.
Instead of buying software and running it in-house, a customer can pay Kronos to provide the service through a remote data center.
Kronos is also adding mobility to the traditional time clock. It offers software apps that let employees check in and out through their smartphones, using the phone’s satellite navigation feature to ensure that the worker really is at the work site.
Kronos’s services cost between $60 and $150 per employee, plus annual fees for running and upgrading the software.
Once publicly traded, Kronos was acquired by private investors in 2007 for $1.74 billion.
