The Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic has made us all reevaluate the work environment and the extreme need to make it safe from air born illnesses. Now that we are opening back up, we have a new normal for interaction in the workplace. Employers are under pressure to put in place social distancing policies to ensure employees and visitors are safe.
The costs we have gone through shutting down has been astronomical for many companies. Now that we are opening back up, how to do we help insure everyone is abiding by the social distancing rules. And how do we limit our risk if an infected employee is discovered. How do we keep our companies open?
Track everyone’s movement and active contacts? Automatically send alerts when a violation occurs? Keep your company open by putting in the right social distancing application?
Here is a list of things you need to enforce your social distancing while limiting your risk.
Track and Enforce Social Distancing
By using available off-the-shelf technologies, easily trace people’s movements as they relate to others. Send alerts real time when people violate the social distancing rules, such as when two people are too close over a certain amount of time or when too many people are congregating together.
Restrict the maximum number of people to each room or area. Setup the location for max number of people allowed and send an alert when the room has exceeded its maximum occupancy.
Contact Tracing
Beyond social distancing is being prepared when a dangerous illness does present itself in someone who was at your facility. That person may have only talked to a couple of people or may have been in contact with dozens of people. But without accurate traceability, how would you know? Do you begin interviewing people and asking them who they have talked to? Memory is often very unreliable. That is where RFID comes in.
RFID technology allows you to easily track everywhere that person has been and know who was in the area with them. Collect a complete genealogy of everyone who may have had contact with the infection and take appropriate action in real-time.
- Track every location personnel goes
- Have a history of who was where and with whom and for how long
- Quickly get a contact report to mitigate risk
- Quickly get comprised individuals tested and quarantined
Testing
If you deem it is critical that you test the people coming into the facility. Taking the tests in real time is important for granting access to the facility. But keeping records of tests and results is also a must in the event an infection does begin to spread.
A traceability solution with integrated RFID capabilities eliminates all the guesswork. By assigning RFID tags to personnel and applying it to their name tag, the software provides results of who has and hasn’t been tested, where they’re at now, where they’ve been and who they’ve been in close contact with inside the facility. For those who test positive for a virus or another contagious disease, immediately restrict access through notifications and alerts. Staff will be notified when someone who has tested positive enters the building limiting exposure.
- Test people as they enter the facility
- Use RFID to track people in the environment
- Alert when personnel with fevers enter the facility
- Alert when untested people enter the facility
- Alert when people who have tested positive for an illness enter the facility
- Stop the illness short of your doors
Alerts
With the right solution, send alerts not only when people are in violation of social distancing rules, but also before they are. Notify through text and emails using wristbands, badges, necklaces, smart phones, and other devices.
Send alerts and notification texts and emails when
- When people are too close for too long
- When too many people are in a location or zone
- Send warning when a room is almost full
- When a compromised or untested person enters the facility
- Warn people before they are in violation to avoid the compromise
Summary
InformaTrac Pro is ready to go to implement a workplace safe environment to test, alert, and report to keep your environment free of disease and productive.
- Start by collecting and recording temperatures of people as they enter.
- Recording test status where applicable
- Visualizing virtual floorplans of all personnel in real-time
- Alert when personnel violate social distancing rules
- Contact Tracing of all personnel that may have had contact with a compromised individual
- Report on the location history an individual over time
Social Distancing
Collect and record people’s movements and in contrast to each other real time. Limit their social distancing using notification and alerts as they happen to assist your personnel’s risk management and adherence to your policies of social distancing.
Tie Test Data to Personnel in Real-Time
When people return to work you may be implementing several testing types, from simply taking your personnel’s temperature to doing antibody tests. Know that only those who passed the test enter the building. And for those who did not pass the test, alert before they enter and know where they have traveled in the facility and with whom they may have had contact.
Contact Tracing
If someone from the facility, sadly, contracts a virus, such as COVID-19, make sure your facility is safe for everyone. By knowing everywhere every person has traveled in the facility, easily derive at what point the comprised person has traveled into overlapping locations with all other personnel. By having this data on hand, quickly isolate the possibility of who else may be compromised in real-time.
Real-Time Notifications/Alerts
Configurable rules to alert staff if people are violating social distancing protocols. Identify exempt personnel (with antibody testing or use of PPE) to prevent false alarms. Also, if a known compromised person approaches the lobby and anywhere else in the facility. Quickly alert a supervisor and/or security personnel to where that person is currently located.
Mitigate Your Risks
By having the right data at your fingertips, reduce risks of air born disease infections, reduce the footprint of those possibly infected, alert those before they are at risk, and keep your company open.
Click here for more information or contact us at (805) 283-4239.
Posted by Jim Huysentruyt and Kris Hughes