Cheshire County Moves Payroll to UKG, Approves One‑month Health‑insurance Premium Holiday

Cheshire County commissioners heard a detailed presentation on a planned migration from the county’s Kronos system to UKG Ready for payroll, time and attendance, recruiting and scheduling modules and approved a temporary benefits change to align deductions with the new system.

Project leads described major functional changes: staff will be able to view pay stubs and timecards in real time, use mobile punching with geofencing, and the county will add recruiting and electronic onboarding modules. Presenters said the migration is necessary because the existing Kronos product is at end‑of‑life and cannot be maintained. The implementation includes significant data validation and staff training; presenters estimated roughly 53.5 hours of online training for core finance/HR users and a parallel payroll run in early November to validate calculations. If validation succeeds, the plan is to produce the county’s first payroll from the new system in the first pay period of 2025.

Cheryl Tremblay explained a related operational change to align benefit deductions with coverage months after the system cutover: the county proposed a one‑month premium holiday in December so deductions for health and dental would begin in January, matching coverage months. She noted the fund balance can sustain the timing change and that the holiday reduces administrative timing issues when employees become eligible mid‑period. "I'm asking for the consideration that the commissioners approve what I would consider a premium holiday," she said. Commissioners moved and approved the premium‑holiday plan with recorded ayes.

What happens next: project teams will continue data validation, run parallel payrolls, begin train‑the‑trainer rollouts for departmental managers and provide the commission with timeline updates ahead of the November parallel run and the January go‑live.