Digital Visitor Management: Why You Should Switch Now

Why Switch to Digital Visitor Management Now? 

Most facility managers find adopting new technology difficult. Why? Users of new tech like visitor management software often resist change. Why not just use paper?

But you can’t let their feelings get the best of your business sense.

Digital visitor management software like Safe Site Check In saves you money the same way all automation does — by substituting technology for labor. That’s a direct & hard business case you can take to the bank!  And digital brings managers ever more data for strategic decision-making and risk management.

See how much you can save using our latest savings calculator HERE.

Check in your employees, visitors, contractors and vendors using SSCI and you’ll automate the daily log you need for compliance and risk management. 

“Hard” Benefits #1 – Direct Cost Savings

Digital Visitor Management Is Faster than Paper

Workers want to enter and exit a worksite fast and easy. Nobody wants to fumble for a pen, fill out paper form, and read fine print. In many facilities, employees are a small proportion of workers on the jobsite. Check-in must be efficient for everyone, whether employees, subcontractor, visitor, inspector, delivery gig worker, vendor – anybody.

Nearly everyone now has a smartphone or has used a QR code or a tablet. So now is the time for digital check in technology and daily log automation. This is where Safe Site Check In shines:

• Place a site-specific QR poster at jobsite entrances. Workers, visitors, everyone, can scan the QR code using their phone or tablet to onboard and check in.
• Or place a tablet for the site at jobsite entrances. Everyone can tap in and either onboard or check in — in English or Spanish.
• Every onboarded worker will receive a QR code digital badge associated with their profile data. Supervisors can use a phone or tablet to scan worker badges.
• Badges can be printed out, even include photos and other data, laminated, or printed on stickers.
• Most companies ask workers to self-checkout on their phone, or tap out on a tablet, or use a default length of shift parameter.
• There’s no need for a queue – workers can all check in at the same time.
• All the above methods can be used together. For example, badges for workers, but posters for visitors, etc.

The only check-in that is faster is not checking in at all. Don’t fool yourself: If you don’t confirm the identity of workers or visitors who arrive at a jobsite, you are only pretending to care about jobsite safety and security, risk and compliance.

Eliminates Paper from Facilities

Facilities are no place for paper forms, whether in the open or a trailer. Industrial worksites can be dirty, exposed to weather, etc. Names and numbers will be illegible. Nobody is taught good penmanship these days.

Data is trapped on paper. Paper data is only usable when the paper is under your eyes. Unless you are scanning or photographing all your forms, or carrying paper around, you won’t have access to its data. Paper is a huge time waste, even before you factor in the cost of transporting and filing.

Digital Visitor Management Eliminates Most Data Entry

Labor costs dominate workflows today. Assuming you can read a paper log form, keying in data is hugely expensive. Even keying in data without paper, like from spreadsheets, is expensive, because most people type slowly and inaccurately. 

Fast, One & Done Onboarding at the Entrance

Onboarding and badging needs to be accurate for compliance and risk management reasons. Onboarding also needs to be one-and-done and fast, so workers get to work immediately.

Use digital visitor management and to perform “one and done” onboarding and badging at reception. It will be faster than sending workers else to capture their identity and review safety orientation documents or videos.

Digital Visitor Management Saves Receptionists Time

Digital check-in and daily log automation reduces administrative labor and allows receptionists to perform other duties, or eliminates the job altogether.

Site security and access control is a fundamental visitor management duty. Digital check-ins, especially with digital badging, is far and away the best easiest way to control site access and prevent unauthorized visits. Nobody needs to interrogate workers anymore on arrival and everybody gets to work faster.

Facility managers rely on the reception desk to provide basic attendance data by worker type: employee, subcontractor, etc. Industrial, educational and government facilities require both attendance data and worker profile data, such as licenses or proof of insurance. Digital check-in gives facility managers such data directly.

Saves Facility & Safety Managers Time

Digital check-in provides facility managers with the time-sensitive data they need to update plans without interrupting or pursuing paper forms. Cuts down on site travel time and costs too.

By combining safety requirements into the check-in and onboarding experience, digital visitor management can extend a safety manager’s reach and allow them to focus on more high-impact training and assessment. Cuts down on their site travel time and costs too.

Digital onboarding can require viewing videos or agreeing to documents or liability waivers, so that jobsite safety requirements are known and agreed-to before granting access. For example, by combining basic safety reminders during check-in: “do you have your PPE”, “are you aware of fall risk on this site”, “did you complete the training video”, etc.

Digital check-in also facilitates communicating with everyone present in the facility in real-time, in case of emergency incidents, like tornado warnings, or retrospectively when investigating an accident or HR incident.

Reduces Compliance Record Archive & Retrieval Costs

Cloud storage is way cheaper than paper, and with digital cloud technology, compliance data storage is immediate, permanent, secure, and private. And the data is immediately available from a database without wading through paper files. Researching claims and incidents of all types improves. 

“Hard” Benefits #2: Indirect Cost Savings

Automation frees up resources and raises productivity. Where facility managers use that productivity for leads to Indirect benefits. These are harder to measure, but no less real.

Better Management Data for Every Department

Many headquarter functions need jobsite data too: Accounting, HR, Project Executives and project managers, risk and compliance. Too much information about facilities is either on paper or only in people’s heads. Getting that information out and available to the rest of the firm is easily solved once the data is digital. 

Better Worksite Safety

Our digital check-in can be configured to advise workers and visitors of each project’s safety requirements, from PPE to current conditions, such as an open trench/fall risk, or imminent heat wave. Safety managers get an important tool for making their project safety plans a reality.

Evidence is also growing that combining safety advisories with check-ins can reduce accidents and incidents. Eventually that will lead to lower workers comp insurance costs. Improving safety over time requires repetition of training, techniques, and monitoring. A digital check-in requires a worker’s attention; they cannot just walk by the way they can with only a poster or signage. Acknowledging safety advice before checking in should be standard practice. Attendance at periodic safety talks can be digitally recorded as well.

Digital communications make safety documentation, such as hazmat data sheets or emergency evacuation plans (EAP) accessible to anyone via mobile device. And now you can communicate in real time with all onsite visitors in case of an emergency.

Finally, worker profile data collected during onboarding – their certs, training history, etc. – is invaluable to safety managers and the facility managers who must enforce safety requirements. 

Better Worksite Security

As when checking in for air travel, check-ins enforce access control. Workers and visitors who haven’t been onboarded can be refused approval, shunted aside and facility managers notified. Problematic resources can be denied entry. Having to provide verified identity and check in discourages theft. Visitor management improves also, lowering risk and improving the visitor experience.

Better Contractor Management Data Quality and Timeliness

Automation of daily logs meets basic compliance requirements, but when used with project management, facility managers can more quickly see if a project is meeting its planned effort and schedule. Facility managers can more easily monitor multiple projects, again with less travel.

Better Accounting Data Quality and Timeliness

Good identity and onsite duration data is key to any hourly compensation plan, whether hourly employee payroll, or vendor time and materials charges. Given strict labor compensation laws, this data is invaluable to prevent overcharging and resolving disputes quickly. Check in data also makes invoice validation for A/P easier.

Better Visitor Profile Data Quality and Timeliness

More and more states are requiring validation of the legal right to work for all workers. Union shops have specific rights and responsibilities as well that HR needs to enforce. And this is a global trend, not just in the USA. (In fact, the USA is behind in such requirements owing to its dependence on undocumented laborers.) 

The best protection against immigration raids is to have proof of legal employment always ready. Combining W9 and I9 data in digital visitor and worker profiles is best practice.

Better Compliance Data & Risk Management

Attendance identity with check-in/out timestamps is the most basic, fine-grained data for compliance and risk management. Eventually, AI and other algorithms will “mine” visitor management  data to avoid surprises and expensive claims.

Reduces Claims, Cost of Claims and Insurance

Attendance identity with check-in/out timestamp data will immediately reduce the number of bogus hourly compensation claims. In fact, such data will immediately reduce the number of any type of claim based on unvalidated observations, because you’ll now know everyone who was present, and individuals will be less able to make stuff up. And the cost of claim handling is often more than the settlement fee. Digital data records expedite the entire process and drive down legal costs.

“Soft” Benefits of Visitor Management Software

Digital Jobsite Check In Gives Facility Managers a Real Time Worksite View

Facility managers want a single source of “truth” in digital data form. Most observers believe competition will drive contractors to digitize and will leave behind the firms who don’t. It’s common sense that better digital data and communications will improve workflows.

Field office/HQ alignment will improve, data will standardize decision making and estimates, AI and advanced analytics will eventually make big impacts, and visitor management software will continue to be a source of competitive advantage.

The attention of everyone on facilities should be on operations. By reducing the number of phone or laptop looks, you raise the productivity of your most expensive resources – experienced facility managers. 

Make Your Digitization Strategy Real

Objections to Digital Visitor Management In Are Pretty Lame

Digital visitor management using a QR code doesn’t require any training because most of us use our smartphones this way every day. Corporate IT doesn’t need to be involved in deployment, since the data flows from phone to cloud directly. There’s no new hardware or computing devices to be purchased or deployed. Simple facilities can be set up and deployed in an hour, but even the most large and complex in less than a day.

So what’s the biggest objection? Requiring everyone to check-in. That’s it. You just have to enforce that one rule.

Clears the Way for More Sophisticated Technology in the Future

It doesn’t make sense to introduce advanced technology to a facility if you don’t even know who’s there, why and how long. A/R, V/R, AI, Robotics all have a place. But not until you know who’s on your worksite.

Now Calculate Your Savings

Hard benefits can drop straight to the bottom line, reduce operating budgets, or redeploy money to higher priority needs. Our visitor management software does not require an expensive enterprise license. Every worksite, even the smallest, can realize more profit and productivity by adopting Safe Site Check In. 

Over the past three years, we’ve validated these hard cost savings with multiple customers and project types. Projects of any size will see savings of over $2 per worker check-in, so the savings increase linearly with the number of workers. For example, here’s a worksite that averages 10 workers per day over 12 months: 

• Expense of Safe Site Check In license: $169 * 12mo == $2028
• Savings from Safe Site Check In: $2 * 10 * 12mo * 20d/mo  == $4800
• Net savings: $4800 – $2028 == $2772
• Break even point: $4800/$2028 * 12mo == 2.37 months

The bigger the number of visitors, the better the business case. For a fast estimate based on your labor costs, use this calculator.