New Normal @ Work
As the world wrestles with the idea of returning to work while the pandemic rages on, how do you ensure the safety of your workplace? There have been different approaches taken, ranging from doing nothing, to implementing health screening. Many screening involving taking temperature of visitors at checkpoints, while others resort to requiring staff to fill out COVID questionnaires on regularly basis. If not done right, processes like these could become labor-intensive and expensive to maintain. In this blog I will describe how technology could help in implementing an effective back-to-work strategy.
Protect the Workplace
Protecting the workplace requires (1) prohibiting people who are exhibiting COVID symptoms, or having contact with people who are infected, or have recently traveled through COVID hotspots; (2) enforcing social-distancing guideline for people in the “safe zone”; (3) keeping a log of contact history; (4) enable self-reporting for back-tracing.
COVID Status
Each staff member should be assigned a color-coded status reflecting his or her COVID transmission risk. For instance, “red” means high-risk and “green” means low risk. One’s COVID status could change when he or she reports infection, determined to have been exposed to infected individuals, or even just exhibiting risky behaviors. The status could restore back to “green” after the individual has completed self-quarantine and tested negative for COVID.
Screening
Before a person is admitted into a workspace, the person’s temperature should be taken, and recent contact and travel history assessed for risk. Temperature screening is best done automated and integrated with the regular security process to reduce COVID exposure of security personnel and added labor cost.
Monitoring
Social-distancing is key in our fight against COVID, even for people admitted into the workplace. Through the use of Bluetooth beacons, smart phones could be used to monitor the distance between individuals, and audibly remind them whenever proper social-distancing is violated.
Data Logging
As a person interacts with others throughout the day, the proximity data could be stored in the cloud for 14 days, the currently accepted incubation period. The data collected can be used for contact tracing and helping management make data-driven policy decisions.
Contact Tracing
When a person reports infection, the contact history stored in the cloud would be used to notify those who were in proximity to the one infected. Notification should explain the reason why they were notified, and include instruction to self-quarantine. The COVID status of the at-risk individual would then change to reflect their new risk level. The new risk level may prohibits the at-risk individuals from reentering the workspace until after they are tested, or have completed self-quarantine.
Solution by E-Motion
E-Motion offer customized solutions that integrates temperature sensing kiosks with mobile app and cloud servers; together they support:
- Screening using questionnaires and temperature taking
- Social distance monitoring and data logging
- Risk reporting and automatic SMS and email notification
- Automatic contact-tracing notification
For more details, please contact E-Motion here, and tell us about your requirement.