Contact Tracing for companies: avoid closing down when others accelerate and keeping your team safe

Many Contact Tracing apps for Corporates are being launched. PwC launched a Contact Tracing app for the workplace based on Microsoft Azure. Salesforce launched Work.com. Why are 28% of companies considering a contact tracing app? To protect employees and to avoid closing down operations while competitors restart. But when does it make sense?

Vion, an international food company with production locations in the Netherlands and Germany, had 147 of the 657 employees of their meat processing entity in Groenlo tested positive for Covid-19. According to De Tijd, the affected production facility was closed and the meat production was temporarily moved to other Vion locations in the Netherlands. As organisations navigate through the Covid-19 crisis and country lock downs are gradually softened, restarting operations, keeping employees safe and ensuring business continuity has become more important than ever. 

The gradual restarting of the economy doesn’t come too soon for many organisations. And then, imagine: you have to close down operations while your competitors are again fully operational. Imagine, that a Covid-19 outbreak starts in one of your operations - one or more people get diagnosed - and you are not able to react immediately and effectively to avoid that you have to close down in an uncontrolled way. 

The investment in preventive measures is still the best strategy. But in case of a potential outbreak within your organization, contact tracing will be crucial. And no, just blindly implementing a contact tracing app will not be good. And just having human contact tracers may not be effective enough either. Herman De Prins, CIO of UCB already wrote an excellent piece about the limitations of blindly using a Contact Tracing app in a public context. Yes, it has its limitations in the technology. Yes, there is the issue of the false negatives and false positives. 

So why did PwC and others build the contact tracing app Check-in* together with Microsoft? 28% of CFOs PwC surveyed said they plan to evaluate the technology as part of their office reopening strategy. Having a contact tracing plan is crucial: contact tracing apps used in the wrong way won’t do the trick. Human contact tracers only also have a tough job for many reasons. 

The combination of both a contact tracing app and human contact tracers implemented and steered with the right considerations might be the best option:

1. Don’t take the panic mode route: when someone registers as being tested positively for Covid-19, don’t send an alert to all people who the person was in contact with based on the app data, but this should be flagged to the Contact Tracers team. Through analytics the Contact Tracers narrow it down if needed based on period, estimated distance, department, length of contact and other information. If this list is too long and there are too many potential false positives, the contact tracers can rely on their offline methods only. If the list is narrowed down they could include the ones identified in their contact list. 
2. Helping contact tracers: Contact tracers are indeed very useful. Unfortunately their task is often difficult as in many organizations positively diagnosed individuals don’t always know who they were in contact with. They may not know the name of the people they were in line with for badging, they may not remember exactly who they were with in the elevator, they may have crossed people from different departments,... 83% don’t have systems and processes in place to track of their workforce (based on the covid navigator outcome). In this context an app can be a big help to narrow down to a short list based on risk parameters.
3. It may be the only list to work from: some of the contact tracing teams indicated that interviewing diagnosed people isn’t always easy in case those are hospitalized and where the lung capacity quickly degrades. These are often patients who go to the hospital quite late, who have already severe symptoms that may worsen quickly. As they may have been on your workfloor for some time, you definitely want to know their list, but interviewing those cases might be difficult. The data from the contact tracing app might be the only source you have.
4. Indirect reputation damage: organisations and individuals don’t want to be the source of infections - for other employees but also for their customers. When someone gets infected with Covid-19, warning a relevant set of people with a balanced message that they need to pay extra attention to their health signals can be important. Nobody wants to be a “patient 31”. 
5. Creating trust with your employees that you do what you can to keep the workplace safe. Some employees might fear going back to the workplace and absenteeism may increase if employees don’t feel protected. 
6. Compliance to privacy regulations: probably the most important one. They need to be taken seriously and compliance is a must, but according to Pascal Tops, Partner Cyber & Privacy at PwC, this shouldn’t be a bottleneck. Robust privacy, access and retention controls need to be closely looked at. It is recommended to look at this on an individual case by case basis. There is an excellent white paper on the security and compliance aspects.
7. Communication and alignment with the workforce representation bodies is crucial to discuss deployment, communication and facilitate enough adoption. The app is to be used on a voluntary basis and to be effective it would need a participation rate high enough. 
8. The technology is not perfect - but good enough. Bluetooth only based solutions are not the best option. There are alternatives. The PwC app is based on the PwC Connected Solutions’ Indoor Geolocation Platform (IGP). No beacons nor other in-room infrastructure. IGP leverages pre-existing signals like WiFi, Bluetooth and door locks to create a unique fingerprint for each room or major space. That adds another layer of specificity in terms of proximity and a higher level of accuracy.
9. More than contact tracing: the PwC toolkit called "Check-In" includes as well means to stay connected with employees and connect feedback on how they feel, if there are productivity concerns, etc.
10. More than the PwC App: whether to use a contact tracing app or not, and if yes, which one to use may depend on the individual needs of the company. This is why we monitor many digital tools which could help in this context, like the one released by Salesforce work.com.

It’s a clear corporate responsibility to look at what is needed in terms of business continuity, what is needed to keep your employees safe, what is needed to come out strong from this crisis. There is anxiety about the virus, fears of job security, concerns about returning to work on-site. Contact tracing is only a small part of the list of the potential measures that can help. But certainly worthwhile evaluating. Each situation is different. What solution works for your organisation may differ from the one for your neighbour or competitor. In any case this is an important topic that should be on your evaluation radar in order to make the right decision to keep your company and your team going strong.

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• *Check-in service page https://www.pwc.com/us/en/products/check-in.html
• https://www.pwc.be/en/news-publications/2020/leveraging-technology-to-create-a-safer-environment.html
• Press release https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/analyst-citations/2019/pwc-launches-check-in-april-2020.html
• https://www.pwc.be/en/helping-firms-mitigate-the-potential-impact-of-covid-19/response-navigator.html
• PwC, which is building a contact tracing app, says that nearly a quarter of CFOs they surveyed said they plan to evaluate the technology as part of their office reopening strategy.