Many businesses are looking for additional safety measures to ensure the health of employees as America reopens. To address new needs, consider offering one (or all) of these safety features to help customers manage the return-to-office as safely and comprehensively as possible.

1: Contact Tracing

Contact tracing is a public health strategy that has been used successfully to combat infectious disease outbreaks across the globe since the 1930s. It has helped track Syphilis in the United States and Ebola in West Africa. It remains to be seen, though, whether some of the new apps that are popping up for contact tracing will be able to deliver on the guidelines, as some are plagued with accuracy and privacy issues.

But if you take the time to find the right contact tracing solution to offer your customers, it has the potential to make a big difference. Some solutions can integrate with visitor management solutions to generate a report that identifies which visitors have occupied the same space, and who may have been in contact with an infected individual. This helps users identify who may be exposed to the coronavirus or other diseases more quickly, enabling them to take the right precautions and inform others, minimizing the potential spread.

2: Personnel Control

While the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) continues to update its guidelines on employee testing, it is likely that personnel testing and/or self-attestation statements will required when entering most facilities.

Personnel control solutions can help by suspending user access automatically until the visitor goes through a screening checkpoint and answers the required COVID-19-related questions. Just make sure to choose a solution which securely stores information and is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act’s standards and EEOC guidelines.

3: Visitor Reporting

Visitor reporting solutions allow users to configure their own interactive COVID-19 screening process. With this, users can create a customized questionnaire regarding the health of visitors, which can help to determine whether a visitor poses a potential health risk.

If a visitor responds to a question in a way that indicates they could expose a facility or employees to the risk of COVID-19, these solutions can send an alert to the host. Visitor reporting allows users to generate reports showing how each visitor answered the screening questions put in place, and can also generate a report identifying users who occupied the same space and may have been in contact with an infected individual.

4: Mobile Credentials

While mobile credentials have been gaining popularity for some time now, there is no better time than now to encourage your customers to make the switch. As employees begin returning to work after months of sheltering in place, the thought of touching the same keypad as the rest of the office goes against everything the CDC and other health officials have been preaching.

With mobile credentials, employees and visitors can unlock doors via their mobile phones, creating a frictionless and easy way to access facilities. And that means no more misplaced key cards — the expense of which are reason enough to deploy mobile credentials instead.