Visitor management systems play a bigger role in the post-pandemic era. They now include various features to ensure the overall safety and health of the end user entity. Additional points, such as security and privacy, should also be considered by users.
Even before the pandemic, visitor management systems had become a popular visitor management tool. They replace pen and paper logs, which may render visitor data illegible. They allow visitors to pre-register and sign in automatically, and their footprint in the building can be traced for security reasons.
Now, in the post-pandemic era where businesses return to work, visitor management plays an even more important role. Visitors who are sick should be denied entry. Social distancing and other rules must be maintained when more visitors enter the end user entity.
In this regard, end users turn to visitor management systems, which now come with various new and enhanced features to meet users’ post-pandemic needs. They say the only constant in life is change, and this has certainly rung true in visitor management space in recent time. It's encouraging to see like-minded businesses deliver pandemic-focused features, providing deeper value to staff members where it's very much become an employee companion tool, too.
So how can VMS’s today help end users with their post-pandemic needs? These are discussed as follow.
Facilitate health screening
Visitor management systems ensure that health screening begins even before the guest shows up. It's now best practice to send pre-registered visitors a health screening questionnaire prior to their visit. The visitor management system would have logic to automatically allow or deny entry based on the visitors answers.
On-premises, additional screening systems can integrate with the visitor management solution to deny entry to guests who are high risks. Today’s visitor management systems have integrations with thermal hand scanners for contactless temperature detection. The temperature captured from the visitor is automatically sent to the visitor management system to allow or block the visitor sign-in.
Customers use a combination of pre-registration, thermal check on arrival and contactless QR codes to manage health screening needs. Ensure that the sign-in points provide options like contactless kiosks, QR code scanning or other metric like face recognition. Kiosks can be a great way to display additional health information and directives.
Ensure social distancing
When more visitors come, social distancing guidelines may become harder to follow. The visitor management system rectifies this situation. Modern visitor management systems need to support an ‘invite first’ approach, limiting on-site presence only to those who have been appropriately vetted, while adhering to occupancy limit thresholds to manage the total occupancy of a space to reduce overcrowding and ensure social distancing.
The VMS may also include hot-desking and capacity alert features to ensure people are kept apart by a safe distance. Office managers can determine which desks are available to reserve based on the office capacity and social distancing guidelines. They can easily add or remove desk availability at each office location as local ordinances change. limiting allows for office managers or facility owners to safely maintain a space without fears of overcrowding or cross-contamination due to a lack of space.
Adapted from a&s Magazine