Keeping critical supply chain employees and facilities healthy

The rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus to pandemic levels has launched the world into strange and uncertain times. 

While many workers adjust to their new home offices and furry colleagues, many others must still go into work each day to maintain the consistent flow of essential items like food and medical supplies.

Businesses in the supply chain, including equipment manufacturers, food and beverage producers, and logistics companies, may, in fact, be dealing with soaring demand, or a pivot in the products they’re manufacturing to support shortages of crucial medical supplies like masks and ventilators. 

Gratitude abounds for those businesses that must remain open to deliver vital — and in some instances, life-saving — products. This is especially true when considering the added stress that the pandemic has caused when it comes to safeguarding these employees and the facilities in which they work. 

There are ways these workplaces can configure a visitor management system to help prevent transmission. By screening anyone entering the workplace for typical COVID-19 risk factors, business leaders are equipped with the information needed to deny building access for those that may be at risk of spreading the illness.

And in case someone who has either worked in or visited these workplaces tests positive for COVID-19, businesses can rely on the always up-to-date digital visitor log data to pinpoint anyone who may have been exposed and curtail any further transmission risk.

Reduce Risk at Your Entryway with Alerts, Agreements + Questions

The first step in your facility’s fight against transmission starts at your front entrance. Everyone who comes into the workplace must pass through it, and setting up processes to screen for high-risk individuals is crucial to keeping your facility safe.

There are a few ways you can use a visitor management system to perform this screening. 

In one instance, you can configure a home screen disclaimer instructing visitors to reschedule any meetings if they have shown symptoms or have been exposed. Here’s an example:

You can also set up an agreement in the system that requires guests to read a series of statements like “I have NOT traveled to a high-risk area in the past two weeks.” and “I have NOT experienced symptoms such as a high fever or cough in the past two weeks.” 

Any “No” or “Cancel” response to those statements ensures that high-risk individuals don’t complete the check-in process to enter your facility.

Watch as our Director of Sales, Tom Foster, walks through a few different ways you can alter your visitor management system’s check-in process with agreements, visitor fields, and alerts.

For a more in-depth look at how we’ve been advising our current customers to configure their visitor management system to reduce the risk of virus transmission in their workplace, read the blog post here.

Accurate Supply Chain Facility Safety Data with a Visitor and Employee Log

Beyond reducing transmission risk through preventing symptomatic and potentially contagious guests from entering your facility, there are visitor management features that can help you safeguard your facility should transmission occur. 

Some businesses use their visitor management system solely to check-in and track visitors throughout their facilities. However, in light of this pandemic, workplaces and manufacturing companies that must remain open can add an employee check-in button to expand data on who is in their facility. 

This button type allows employees to check in and check out of the facility so that the business has a record of everyone in the building — employees and visitors alike  — at any given time. 

After all, simply screening at entry is not a 100-percent foolproof way to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Someone in your facility may be asymptomatic, or at the beginning of the incubation period, and still able to pass the virus on to another person. 

This digital visitor log complete with timestamped check-in and check-out data will be crucial to helping you prevent further transmission if someone who has been in your facility tests positive for COVID-19. You’ll have a detailed record of everyone who was at your workplace at the same time as the person who tested positive, so you can reach out and recommend self-quarantine, testing, and increased vigilance. 

Businesses operating in the global supply chain cannot shut their doors and send employees to work from home. Naturally, this has increased stress for those businesses as they work to protect their employees and visitors alike. There are steps you can take with a visitor management system to help reduce that anxiety and lower transmission risk at your workplace. 

Visit our manufacturing, food and beverage, and logistics pages to read more about leveraging visitor management in your industry, and download our complete guides to easing visitor chaos in the workplace.