With COVID-19 showing no sign of going away in the next couple of years, businesses are searching for solutions to help them reopen and stay open safely. Many holding leadership roles are struggling to figure out how to make sure offices are outfitted with new safety measures for employees and visitors.
Technology is available to help answer those safety questions. Some business owners are considering a visitor and employee registration tool to manage each step of contact when inviting employees back to work. Or integrating with temperature screening technology on their video surveillance to make sure they’re healthy when they arrive to the workplace. And more are looking to touchless access control systems to help reopen their office safely.
What is touchless access control? And how Invision Security can help you keep your workplace safe?
Below are 4 ways touchless access control systems increase workplace safety and security so visitors and employees have peace of mind coming back into the office.
What is touchless access control?
Building access control use to require separate physical keys. Then came keycards and fobs. Now electronic systems can unlock any door without touching any shared surfaces. Touchless access control systems can work by wave to unlock, tablet, card, fob or your personal mobile device, or watch apps or even encrypted face recognition with multi-factor authentication and supports biometric too.
When you tie access control to your visitor management system, these benefits extend to anyone coming into your workplace. Beyond that, touchless access control can help companies manage a safer return to the workplace. Here’s how.
1. Unlock doors without touching them
The problem with physical keys, keycards, or fobs is that they’re unhygienic. Anyone returning to the office during or after the pandemic will be hypersensitive to contamination. Offering your workforce and visitors a touchless, hand-free, germ-free experience would give you, your staff and visitors peace of mind. Companies have to address this issue of how to unlock doors safely and with minimal contact.
Touchless access control systems offer a simple, secure way to enter any building or workplace using just your face or mobile phone. Once the door is unlocked comes the problem of actually opening the door. There are a few options available for companies to consider:
- Recommended – Invest in automatic door opener so people can avoid touching door handles
- Advise people to push open the door with a shoulder, forearm, elbow, or even an object in their hand
- Provide hand sanitizer and disinfectant to regularly disinfect door handles
2. Give visitors a touchless sign-in experience
Any visitors who plan on coming to your office will likely be nervous before visiting. It’s an unknown environment. They’re not sure what health and safety measures you have in place. The last thing they want is to touch a pen or tablet for a registration or sign-in process. Put them at ease with a touchless sign-in experience. This not only helps reassure visitors that you’re keeping their safety in mind but also increases building security.
You can easily manage a touchless sign-in for guests using the visitor management system. Here are a few important steps you can take to increase workplace safety when you connect your visitor management and access control systems:
- Send visitors entry instructions via email before they arrive so they have directions and know how to access your workplace.
- Take some of the mental load off of your guests by sharing important health and safety information before they come onsite.
- If you need guests to sign any documents or take their photos, give them the opportunity to do so in advance. No signing a logbook or tapping on an iPad with a communal object in the lobby.
- Grant visitors touchless building access by providing a QR code in their email invite that they can use to enter your space.
- Offer the option to download an app for easier, quicker access. This is especially useful for frequent visitors.
3. Health and wellness tied into building access
The CDC suggests conducting daily health screenings before allowing employees to return to the office. You can use an employee registration tool to manage who is coming to the office each day and send them a health questionnaire before they arrive.
This is an important way to ensure that no one is sick before they come in. The CDC recommends asking anyone who plans to come to your office if they have a fever or any symptoms consistent with COVID.
You may want to ask other questions to help you determine if they may have been exposed to COVID-19, like:
- Have you been in close contact with anyone who has COVID in the past 14 days?
- Have you traveled out of state recently?
Key Feature – You can connect this questionnaire as a rule to your touchless access control solution so that only employees who have been approved to come onsite can access your workplace.
4. Take control of building with remote access
Another benefit of touchless access control is that they are cloud-managed. This means you operate and update everything remotely. No need to worry about rushing back to the office when an employee needs a new key card or gets locked out by mistake. Admins can grant or revoke access, change user schedules, and edit permission levels from anywhere, anytime remotely.
A few reasons why cloud-based solutions are critical for workplace safety:
- They get rid of the need for face-to-face interactions for reasons like issuing keycards or fobs
- Security teams can instantly lock or unlock any door in a building to immediately handle safety or security threats
- Admins can revoke access for employees who have not been approved to go onsite
- Admins can visually verify visitors with video intercom and grant building access from anywhere
Looking for an access control solution that gives you all of the workplace safety benefits above?
Invision Security provides touchless, secure access for every industry type of workplace. Employees and visitors can unlock doors and enter buildings through either their mobile phone or even facial recognition. Plus, Invision Security Access Systems connect with other IOT and security devices so you can tie in remote access control to employee registration and visitor management.
Here is a list of additional feature options available:
- Hands-Free Wave Access
- Additional Door Entrances
- Garage & Gate Access
- Hands-Free Elevator Integration
- Turnstiles Access
- Biometric
- Multi-Authentication
- Visitor Management
- Video Management
- Thermal Integration
- Face Mask Detection
- Lockdown
- Occupancy Management
- Tailgating/ Social Distancing
- Wellness Screening/ Survey Completion
- Mask Detection
- Video Surveillance Integration
- IOT Lighting Integration
- Electrified Doors
- Wireless Locks
- Alarm Integration
Health, safety, and wellness are paramount for employees and visitors. Touchless access is also available at the enterprise level of business. Learn more about how to enable touchless access for visitors and employees in the following industries: real estate, manufacturing, industrial offices, retail, schools, gyms and places of worship.
Contact us today for a seamless integration of Touchless Access Control from Invision Security.
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