Across the U.S., cities and county governments arefacing a growing challenge: keeping up with the constant stream of new laborlegislation and collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) that impact howemployees are paid, scheduled, and managed.
From evolving overtime thresholds and union pay differentials to paid leave mandates and emergency response compensation rules, the landscape of workforce compliance is shifting faster than most legacy systems can adapt. For local governments operating on on-premiseworkforce management systems, staying compliant has become not only complicated—but risky.
Legislation and CBAs: The Changing Pay Landscape
State and federal legislators are introducing more nuancedlabor laws each year—often designed to protect workers in public service roles.These may include:
For each new mandate or CBA modification, payroll and HR teams must adjust timekeeping logic and pay calculations to reflect those changes accurately.
In a digital world, this should be straightforward. But forgovernments running older, on-premise systems, these updates require code-levelmodifications—often by IT staff who are already stretched thin.
Traditional on-premise time and attendance platforms, manyof which have been in use for over a decade, were not built for the rapidlegislative change cycles governments now face. Updating a pay rule oftenrequires:
When IT staff are short-handed—a growing reality in manycounties and municipalities—these changes can take weeks or even monthsto implement. In the meantime, payroll inaccuracies and compliance risks canescalate.
The rigidity of these older systems creates a bottleneckbetween legislation and implementation—and that delay can lead to costlygrievances, back pay obligations, or audit findings.
Modern, cloud-based Time and Attendance solutions aredesigned with flexibility at their core. Rather than relying on developers tomanually rewrite code, these systems allow business users and administratorsto:
This adaptability enables governments to respond inreal-time to new requirements—whether they come from the state legislature,federal mandates, or the bargaining table.
According to recent surveys from the National Association ofCounties (NACo), IT departments in local governments are operating with 20–40%fewer staff than needed to support modernization efforts. Most are focusedon maintaining critical infrastructure and cybersecurity, leaving little timefor repetitive system updates.
A flexible, configurable time and attendance system shiftsthe burden away from IT—allowing HR and payroll administrators to managecompliance updates directly, without waiting for developer intervention.
For county and city governments, compliance is non-negotiable—but agility is now the key to maintaining it. Legislatorswill continue to evolve pay policies and labor protections. Unions willcontinue to refine CBAs. The organizations that can translate those changesinto system logic quickly and accurately will avoid risk, reduceadministrative burden, and ensure fairness for their employees.
Modern workforce management platforms—like Infor WFM, delivered by Timework—are built specifically to meet this challenge. They combine the power of configuration flexibility, compliance automation, and real-time reporting—all critical for public sector environments where accuracy, transparency, and accountability matter most.
The age of static, on-premise timekeeping is over.
As legislation and CBAs grow more dynamic, cities and counties can no longerafford to depend on systems that require developer intervention to remaincompliant.
A flexible, configurable time and attendance platformisn’t just an IT upgrade—it’s a governance necessity. For public sectororganizations, it represents the bridge between legislative complexity andoperational control.
