Seamless Data Insights Help Create Safe Workplaces People Can Trust

Businesses have always needed to keep their employees, customers and business partners safe. But with COVID-19, safety has become the imperative, a factor that determines whether a business can run productively or financially-viable. And it also gives once in a lifetime opportunity for Facility Operations to add value to business and lead the way.

Some industries have re-opened and focused on physical environmental and behavioral changes, leveraging the CDC’s interim guidance. Examples of installing screen guards in front of cashiers, posting signage encouraging social distancing, and encouraging good hygiene practices with hand sanitizers everywhere have become the new norm. These tactics doubtless aid in lowering risks, but can have a varying impact on alleviating employees anxieties. Such near-term initiatives also limit a company’s ability to automate the gathering and reporting of information that measure the impact of their risk mitigation and its compliance to regulatory reporting. Additionally, it can challenge how insurers match pricing to actual risk, or fail to give organizations the data they need to make safety a convincing part of their brand promise to customers—something every retail business will need to do in order to prosper.

In order to tackle these challenges, a more systemic approach, enabled by digital is recommended to drive sustainable safety monitoring measures. Enterprises racing to reopen need a two-prong approach for the near term and long term, that deliver greater efficiency in deploying many facets of the CDC’s safe workplace guidance combined with edge devices, sensors, analytics and digital tech. This would enable cost-effective capabilities that capture and utilize environmental insights to act, respond and adapt with emerging demands in the future.

A Safe Buildings solution would cohesively bring together a layering of controls to mitigate risks and manage potential threats responsively. New safety solutions in the new normal include:

1.      Physical distancing effectiveness. The manufacturing industry have been one of the early adopters of Bluetooth or UWB enabled smart wristbands. This prevention measure would enable employees to maintain physical distancing norms on the shop floor. Gentle reminders would send an audio, visual or vibration alert of any risk anomalies when specified six-foot distancing norms are not being maintained. The real-time, daily alerts are visible to the employee and manager to reward healthy distancing performance levels. Additional supervisor reports can provide insights into persistent, non-compliant employees or areas of overcrowding to adjust and encourage consistent mitigation practices.

2.      Contact tracing. Smart wrist band technology can additionally anchor contact tracing capabilities to gather data from employees who have been in close contact (within six feet) with a positive COVID-19 case. Key stakeholders gain real-time reporting visibility of contact movements, as well as cluster information and an exposure register to effectively manage and reduce potential impact and extended exposure to the workforce.

3.      Monitoring hand hygiene. In practical terms, smart wristbands can use motion sensing to determine whether individuals are properly washing their hands, including before leaving a washroom or entering designated clean areas. Smart soap dispensers can communicate with wearable devices. Those in compliance receive a digital token that gives them access to safe zones, while those who are not get a reminder to do so.

4.      Thermal temperature tracking. With fever being a common COVID-19 symptom, there is new emphasis on measuring body temperatures at building entrances. Thermographic Cameras would detect people and then flag non complaint temperature profile to security personnel, who would intercept risks — perhaps escorting them to a virus-testing booth for further evaluation or to complete a wellness survey to maintain a safe environment.

5.      Air Quality tracking utilizes sensor-based monitoring of air flow, temperature, and humidity in buildings to help prevent the spread of pathogens through HVAC systems regulating air flow and related filters, purifiers and UVGI systems. Automated alerts can trigger maintenance to efficiently maintain high standards of elevated air quality.

6. People Density Tracking will inform the movement patterns of people whether its a retail store, recreation facilities, factories or resorts. Facility managers would be able to regulate the flow of traffic, reconfigure workspaces or merchandize aisles as well as cordon off areas as required. Beyond COVID, the same data collected from the solution will aid retail stores to place the right products and offers in the aisles which have the most footfalls and eyeballs.

The purpose of such layering of control solutions is to keep everyone safe, mitigate risks, and take the guesswork and gaps out to promote safety. Reports can help managers track, verify, and improve their compliance methods, identifying gaps that can be addressed through better allocation of resources, new devices, or reconfiguring spaces.

Businesses that most quickly deploy comprehensive systems to provide data about safety and compliance will see the biggest reductions in risk and the biggest increases in sales and profits most quickly. Certainly, senior management will need to communicate the importance and meaningful value of measures such as temperature scanning, contact tracing and space use monitoring before employees return to work; and organizations must also comply with regulations protecting the privacy of employees, customers and business partners.

Building a comprehensive infrastructure for analyzing environmental insights and movement patterns, compliance and potential risks takes a little time. However, deploying sensors and accumulating the data they produce into management portals and dashboards can be completed in a few short weeks.

Longer-term, this post pandemic automation push will see facilities get smarter with highly efficient energy management systems, a differentiated workplace experience to employees and customers alike promoting a touchless environment as well as adding to their operational savings. It will also make it easier for them to adjust their technology, processes and communications to increase their safety as our understanding of this situation and other health threats evolves.

If you would like to learn more about how companies from virtually every industry are navigating the pandemic safety challenges and in turn transforming their facilities and workspaces, message me on LinkedIn.

If you are revaluating reopening your physical workplace post #COVID19, RSVP and tune-in to our webinar to learn insights from Cognizant and special guest, Joe Allen of Harvard Public Health (Assistant Professor and Author). You’ll takeaway research-based insights into 9 foundations in creating a “healthy building”. #IoT #smartbuilding Cognizant