With the announcement made about initiating lockdown level 3 from Monday next week, there are now new rules in place for businesses.
Under alert level 3 most businesses can start to reopen as long as they aren’t client-facing; and if employees can work from home, they should.
However, if you need to bring essential workers into the office, you are able to do so as long as you have safe-practice measures in place.
"Covid-19 has spread in workplaces, so the quid pro quo of being able to open is doing it in a way that doesn't spread the virus," Jacinda Ardern said during Monday’s announcement.
According to the New Zealand government, workplaces must keep one metre between workers, record who is working together, limit interaction between groups of workers, regularly disinfect surfaces, and maintain high hygiene standard.
Here at SmartSpace, we’ve got your back. We know it can be tough to modify your workspace and daily operations in order to accommodate these new rules and restrictions– so we’ve assembled several solutions to help you make you get back to work safely, and ensure your office is Covid-19 compliant.
One of these solutions is the FloorSight hardware and software.
What is floorsight?
FloorSight is an intelligent desk sensor that can be installed directly into each workstation.
While it is typically used by our clients to monitor floor usage (providing extensive real-time data to help drive overhead savings and productivity gains) – in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak this tech has been upgraded to help businesses keep employees safe and meet their obligations to operate safely at different Covid-19 threat levels.
If you already have FloorSight installed, these new features will help you get your Covid-19 systems up to speed; and even if you don’t have FloorSight sensors installed in your workspace, you can still use the virtual app to get a lot of the same functionality.
Here’s how FloorSight can help make your business Covid-19 compliant:
Easy contact tracing
Under new lockdown rules, companies need to record who has been working near who in order to meet their government obligations. And if someone in the office falls ill with coronavirus, it’s essential to know who they’ve been working near during the incubation period.
FloorSight provides simple and easy-to-run reports that track who has been sitting near who across any user-defined period. Not only that, but it can also intelligently calculate nearby desks based on the floorplan distances – so can quickly identify and flag those who might have come into contact with the virus.
Desk lock-off to enforce social distancing
To easily enforce minimum separation requirements of 1m, facilities managers can lock off desks to ensure that workers can only check-in to spaces that are a safe distance from other users.
This is fully flexible – so at higher alert levels businesses could choose to lock off all desks but one per pod, for example, or at lower levels, every second desk could be locked off. If someone sits at a locked-off desk a warning will sound from the FloorSight speaker.
Track workstation cleaning
Keeping employees safe means providing a clean and hygienic work environment; to a far greater degree than offices are used to being cleaned.
Tracking the cleaning of work points in a shared desk environment is now easy via FloorSight pucks, which let cleaners tag the desk with their access badge to record it has been sanitised.
Facilities can monitor the cleaning progress on a live floorplan, and cleaning contractors are now more accountable for their very important work. The FloorSight puck can track the time and frequency of work point cleaning via a swipe of the cleaner’s access card on the puck. The contactless swipe signals to the system that the workstation is now clean, along with audio and visual feedback to both cleaner and user.
The FloorSight occupancy tracker monitors desks becoming used and can trigger further cleaning requests automatically after usage. Lastly, the FloorSight live floorplan view tracks workspace cleaning in real-time, so office managers can check the status of desks at any time, along with manually updating the status of any work points after spot cleaning.
Visual floorplan to help staff find safe spaces
FloorSight has always provided users with a very easy way to select a desk for their task, and now goes one step further to show how recently it has been cleaned, and whether someone else used it before.
The app shows staff which desks and workstations haven’t been used since they were last cleaned, so they can pre-book these safe spaces before arriving at work (for an admin-defined period); and no other users will be able to check into the space once it’s booked.
Finally, as workstations are used throughout the day they become marked on the live floorplan as ‘used’ so users know where they can work safely, and what needs to be cleaned again if shared by different users in a single day.
Reporting on remote workers
Working from home will become a lot more common for many businesses through the next 6-18 months. FloorSight enables tracking these users’ locations (with consent, of course) and enables you to see when they check-in to their home office to start work each day.
FloorSight can also provide managers with detailed reports on their teams’ ratio of work at home vs. work from the office days to make sure the balance is right for both companies and their staff; and helps you know when to rotate staff into and out of the office as needed.
We’ve got your back!
All of this innovative technology and functionality is fantastic for keeping your staff safe, and your business COVID-19 compliant; especially as we may potentially cycle through different alert levels in the coming months.
If you’re interested in using FloorSight to protect your people and your business, click here to contact the SmartSpace team today. We can install FloorSight sensors into your office or deploy the cloud-based virtual FloorSense app for anyone without the FloorSight hardware.
We’re here to support you.