” ISJ EXCLUSIVE: DESIGNING THE FUTURE FOR CORPORATE PREMISES ”
Why long-term investments in access control and visitor management offer the best value when it comes to adapting to the pandemic. By Lee Copland, Managing Director, Maxxess EMEA
For many organisations the question of reopening premises, and how best to do it, has been kicked down the road into 2021.
Questions are still being asked about what the future holds for cities. As the second wave of the pandemic bites, life in city centres is subdued, with streets sadly deserted and office buildings sparsely occupied.
Will new ways of operating and using high rise buildings be found, and will hollowed-out business districts and city centres revive? Or can we expect a more protracted period of decline as businesses fail, or switch away from running offices in favour of home working?
It’s always hard to feel hopeful in the midst of a recession, and always hard to see any signs of ‘green shoots’. And in many countries the worst economic impacts are yet to be felt, as governments continue to rack up debts that will have to be reckoned with further down the line. But inevitably city life will return.
During the first wave of the pandemic, and the summer lull, many employers switched to homeworking for their teams, without apparently suffering a major drop in productivity. It’s wise to treat self-reported performance figures with some scepticism, and it’s not hard to see problems arising in a number of areas, particularly as the weeks pass and the attrition of repeated lockdowns and continual social distancing takes its toll.
Businesses, like stock markets, are affected by ‘animal spirits’ – and as social animals, our spirits are down. We are all feeling the effects of increased isolation.
Specific concerns for businesses relying on home working include how to maintain sales performance, how to onboard new staff, how to manage the psychological impact of increased isolation, how to comply with duty of care obligations for workers at home, and above all how to maintain the creative energy, ambition and drive that comes from working in a team in the flesh, not on screen.
True, the benefits of home working have been appreciated by many employees, with improved work-life balance, and the hassle and cost of commuting forgotten. On good days, these benefits make up for the lack of personal contact, and the blurring of boundaries between work and home.
Meanwhile, for businesses and organisations that operate out of multi-floor offices, the challenges of adapting physical premises to meet future needs are daunting.
So, they are holding fire.
This makes good sense. Instead of hastily adapting premises (for example, fitting ‘fever detection’ fixes that have little proven benefit) they are taking it slow and working out smarter, more strategic ways forward.
One area worth exploring is contact tracing. Solutions which can identify and enable support for individuals who may have been exposed to infection on site are a potentially solid investment. These systems can help cut the risk of onwards transmission, and allow businesses to continue operating when others are unable to.
In sectors such as hospitality and eating out, the ability to contact trace has obvious benefits – but there are many other organisations who could be helped by it too.
The food processing sector, logistics operations and other essential supply chain operations are all potentially at heightened risk of virus outbreaks, and dealing with these efficiently will help to minimise reputational damage and negative impacts on employee and customer confidence. The same applies to any organisation dealing with deliveries and collections, or where contractors pass through and interact with staff.
To be effective, a contact tracing solution needs to do more than just encompass employees. Every person visiting a site has to be included, which makes it harder for organisations to monitor and manage.
A huge variety of tech solutions is now on offer, including indoor positioning systems, sensors, mobile apps, AI-powered analytics, and wearable devices.
But for many organisations currently being courted by their suppliers, the answer may be more obvious, and less risky. It’s possible to go a long way to solve the immediate challenges of the pandemic without having to invest in new, single-purpose technologies.
Adapting and enhancing their existing access control infrastructures may give them all the capabilities they need. And system strengthening they put in place now will continue to deliver significant value long into the post-pandemic future.
The C-suite executives who hold the purse-strings are well aware that they are facing an unprecedented test of resilience, and that being able to succeed against upcoming challenges will depend partly on how flexible and adaptable their operations can now be.
And in part that comes down to how well their buildings can be used.
So, security systems integrators and consultants have an opportunity here, if they can align themselves with this understanding. To do so, they need to be working with heads of security and FMs to build business cases that also have the support of HR, IT, and other departments.
The security sector is well positioned to deliver on this by transforming existing access control infrastructure. We can now deliver logical, next-step solutions that offer much greater value, power, and potential by combining access control and visitor management.
Right now, these solutions will give organisations all the contact tracing capabilities they need, by integrating their Active Directory databases (or other systems) with their access transaction data. In practical terms, they can easily track and report who goes where, in all their premises.
These solutions already allow automated pre-screening of visitors, including employees, floating staff, contractors, delivery drivers, and one-time guests. They allow contactless passage through secure entrances using QR codes, or restriction of access according to location and time – the flexibility they offer is enormous. And throughout, they can track and record individual movements and dwell times.
The value of these solutions during the current restrictions is obvious. They make it easier for premises to be operated hygienically, to identify areas where there may be an infection risk, to target disinfection, or temporarily restrict access.
Maintenance and cleaning teams can also be more easily monitored and managed, with mobile apps providing an up to-date-picture, and audit trail, of which areas have been inspected and cleaned – from meeting rooms to HVAC systems. It’s now straightforward to integrate AI video surveillance tools too, such as the latest edge VA cameras or video management software that features deep learning analytics. These provide operators with meta data filtering allowing individuals movements to be retraced across multiple streams based on door transaction data.
To be clear, organisations can and will do some of these things with quick fix hardware and additional manpower – but not as cost-effectively, or as reliably.
And beyond the pandemic, integrated and smart, automated solutions will let organisations adapt to managing more dispersed operations with an increased remote or mobile workforce.
Their power lies in the way they use and integrate data.
By linking together previously disparate systems and silos of information we can provide organisations with the intelligence they need for more informed decision-making. And that will give them a crucial efficiency advantage they need to recover as well as the preparedness to pivot and adapt to future threats and operational challenges.
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