Here is how I have worked out to deal with my boards not having a
battery for the clock.
After firstboot login as root. This is the FIRST thing I do, even
before changing root's password so that timestamps are good going forward.
date mmddhhmmyyyy #where hhmm is UTC time.
timedatectl set-timezone <timezone> #(for me that is America/Detroit)
date # to check that I have done things right.
Now I can do what ever must first things to do, like change root's
password. And the last step is:
yum install chrony
Now some short time for all future boots after the network comes up,
chrony will adjust the system time correctly.
This may be as good as it gets until/unless chrony comes in as part of
the minimal image.