Elizabeth Beers, '17

Growing up in the Boston area, Elizabeth Beers, ’17, recognized the name Kronos. The tech company, based in nearby Chelmsford, Mass., sells workforce management hardware and software. But when the leadership studies and business administration double major applied for an internship at the company, she was mostly familiar with its positive employee reviews and outstanding company culture, not its product or that product’s potential to affect companies and employees around the world.

Beers, who did not have prior experience in the field, dove into the internship, relying on her research skills to learn not only about the company but also the five industries it serves.

Beers was tasked with creating an “Industry 101 Kit” for the manufacturing industry as one of her primary projects. Although she started her internship with virtually no knowledge of the manufacturing industry or workforce management systems, Beers hit the books and collaborated with Kronos employees to create a document that provides an overview of the industry, noting critical business issues and how Kronos’s solutions can solve these problems.

“I spent weeks reading articles, internally published materials, and books and watching videos and recorded presentations to get a really good understanding of the industry,” says Beers. “While the actual research wasn’t difficult, it has been synthesizing all of this information that has proven the most challenging. With basically infinite information about the topic available, it has proven tricky to take all of this information and decide what the main key business issues are and organizing the information in an understandable way.”

After reading, analyzing, and writing, Beers produced an overview of the manufacturing industry that noted how Kronos can add value for manufacturing companies. Once posted, this document will be accessible to all Kronos employees worldwide.

“With the growing global competition in the manufacturing industry, every organization is looking to cut costs. A response to this from many employers is lowering wages,” explains Beers. “However, the implementation of Kronos’s software allows a company to improve productivity and lower labor costs without sacrificing the wellbeing and wages of the workers.”

And although Beers might not have been familiar with software or the manufacturing industry at the beginning of her internship, the Jepson student is familiar with analyzing how systems affect people.

“It may be easy in my projects to forget the software’s end users. I’m glad that with my position I have learned so much about how people are affected,” says Beers. “I’ve learned about how this software frees up nurse practitioners from administrative work and allows them to be with patients, and how using self-scheduling tools, nurses have more control over their schedules, providing greater work-life balance that helps them feel engaged and valued.”

For Beers, the knowledge that her how contributions this summer will benefit Kronos employees around the world to help make these end results possible is the most rewarding part of her Jepson Internship.