Getting back to business whilst keeping apace with Covid safety has been a real challenge. Whilst it's understandable that your first priority will be thinking about how to keep your staff safe, managing visitors is also key. Since the outbreak there have been some distinct stages in the way the workplace have reacted to visitors. As a leading provider of visitor management solutions, SG World have had to react quickly to evolve our visitor management range . . . and our own working processes.
Back in March, before the country had absorbed the full impact of Covid, we initially saw the introduction of no handshake policies and quickly adapted our range to include supporting signage. As the outbreak progressed and the UK went into full lockdown, schools and sites closed their gates and the ones who remained open limited incoming visitors wherever they could.
In the last few months our way of working has changed radically with many people embracing tools such as Teams and Zoom to facilitate online meetings, with great success. SG World set up an online appointment booking mechanism and started hosting interactive virtual meetings with our customers and partners. It was a direction we were already moving in which was accelerated to meet the challenges of social distancing.
However in many situations you can’t replace the face to face experience with its digital counterpart and today businesses, retailers and schools have all gradually re-opened their doors to staff and visitors. Identifying and tracking these visitors has never been more important, as an accurate, dated visitor contact record is instrumental to any successful track and trace initiative.
“We are finding this is raising many practical questions,” said Patrick Ashe, SG World Sales Manager.
"For example - if your reception has touchscreen visitor check-in, how do you manage the infection risk of this high contact touchpoint? SG World was able to address this by enhancing our current visitor check-in screens to include a contactless module using the visitor's mobile phone and scanning feature to complete check-in.”
Whilst we can hope a vaccine is on the horizon, realistically Covid-19 is here for the foreseeable future. It has dictated step changes in our lives and the way we view visitors into our place of work . . . and at home. During a pandemic visiting trick and treaters may not be welcome, even Santa had better review his COVID-19 safety assessment.
