workplace safety Archives

Introducing our new Visitor Management System: Create the best and safest workplace impression

Posted on March 18, 2022November 27, 2023 by Luke Christian-Farman

In any organization the first impressions of the office count. The office in many ways is the physical manifestation of company culture, similarly equaled to inviting guests into your home. It’s a big deal to any CEO, and now with a workforce well versed in compliance procedures, having an easy-to-use visitor management system that keeps your people and guests safe as they return to the office in floods is just as important. I mean, how do companies really keep up?

At Kadence we believe that when people collaborate together in great spaces, that’s where the magic truly happens, and now keeping them safe in the process is a win-win for everyone. We thought: what if we had a tool that allowed users to invite guests on-site for meetings, team collaboration, or contracted work? And when they came in they saw every space filled with magical team collaboration, and they were all completely safe to be there? Umm…I wonder what first impression that would give?

Oh wait…we did that!

Create bookings and invite guests within a single platform

All within the same flow, users can make a booking for themselves, for their teammates, or for their guests. It simply couldn’t be easier. Our new visitor management system not only makes you a professional meeting planner in seconds, it also completely changes the way bookings for everyone are made in your hybrid workplace, thanks to Kadence.

Kadence visitor management — Create bookings and invite guests in one place

Invite guests onsite in seconds

No more using separate platforms to invite guests onsite. These take even more time and can easily frustrate the most patient of people. As well as being able to invite external visitors onsite in the blink of an eye using their email address, Kadence also sends booking invitations to guests, arrival instructions, and even a health check – all on-brand. Now that’s a great first impression if ever there was one!

Kadence visitor management system — Create ‘onsite’ bookings for your visitors in just a few clicks

Keep everyone safe

In an effort to ensure that everyone who comes into your office is safe to be there, admins can set up pre-arrival instructions that get sent automatically. These can include your company’s health check policy, as well as any other requirements such as providing proof of vaccination upon their visit, and location directions including how to get there or where to park. Admins can ensure guests self-certify by completing a health check before arrival to say that they have no COVID symptoms, and if there ever was an outbreak, admins can easily get a list of who was on site for contact tracing to prevent further spreading.

How it works?

Getting Started

Log in on the Kadence mobile app or desktop platform and go to ‘Settings’ > ‘Visitor management’.
Enable the ‘Visitor management’ feature
Upload your company logo
Add guest arrival instructions and/or entry requirements to your building.

Inviting guests

Start a new booking and select ‘desk’ to reserve a space for your guest to work, or ‘onsite’ if your guest is visiting the office for a meeting and doesn’t need a desk.
Select the date & time of your booking. These can be ‘all day’, ‘recurring’, or standard bookings.
Enter your guest’s email address and their name so they can receive a personal invitation, and reminders. (if you’re making an onsite booking, then you’re done here)
Select a desk and confirm your booking
Guests will receive an invitation via email along with your health check policies for them to complete prior to arrival
A follow-up reminder is sent to your guest up to 24 hours before they are due to arrive onsite
On the day your guest will receive an email allowing them to ‘check-in’ up to 30 minutes before their booking; notifying the host of their arrival
If for any reason the booking is canceled, both the host and guest will receive an email

Safely manage your team’s return in the New Year

Posted on November 30, 2021 by Luke Christian-Farman

If you’re planning a safe return to the office for your team in the New Year, it’s important to put the right steps in place to ensure your team can be productive and safe while they work and collaborate.

With new variants and added uncertainty, there will continue to be ebbs and flows, ups and downs, as companies open up their offices again for Hybrid…which is exactly why companies are turning to Kadence.

The solution needs to be simple to use and fast to rollout, and now with Kadence it is. With all the essential tools you need in one place, you can quickly and effectively make sure your entire office is secure, and safe for your employees to return – here’s how.

Simple health sign-in – Ensure a safe and secure re-entry to the office

Admins can set health screening guidelines to align with their company’s health and safety policies. Determine employee health instructions and include anything you want from vaccine mandates to wearing a mask. Release desk bookings for no-shows and allow employees to book spaces up to 3 months in advance. Allow employees and visitors to self-certify before checking in to their reserved spaces from 1hr, 2hrs, or 24hrs of their arrival and prevent employees from checking in if they have not self-certified. With Kadence simple health sign-in, you set the parameters to keep your people safe. Find out more about our visitor management solution.

Team contact tracing – Manage people’s safety in the office

Access your team’s schedule in the Teams Activity overview to see when and where employees are working and see who they’re working with on the interactive floorplan. Know which spaces they’ve booked now and in the future and block out particular spaces or neighborhoods to implement social distance space booking for added safety.

Find out more about our people coordination solution.

Touchless experience – An all-in-one booking tool, all-in-one place

Employees can also book any space that’s available either near colleagues or anywhere on the floorplan with the right amenities they need for the day eg. Sit-stand desk, monitors, keyboard, etc. Reserve a private room for a group meeting, book a parking space for their ride, and admins can book on behalf of others all within the mobile app booking flow.

Find out more about our desk scheduling & room scheduling solutions.

Oversee capacity limits – Rich space usage insights for easy decision making

Easily understand space usage insights so you can set building and floor capacity limits and re-assign employees to under-used space. Control booking permission levels to anyone you choose and book on behalf of others helping you bring your team together on particular days.

Check out this post to learn how to set up self-certification to help meet the U.S. vaccination mandate requirements.

Interested to see how Kadence can help bring your team back to the office safely? Book a demo with one of our team today to find out more.

How to set up self-certification to meet the new U.S. mandate requirements

Posted on September 13, 2021October 2, 2023 by Luke Christian-Farman

As cases of the Delta coronavirus variant have risen and vaccination rates slowed, a new vaccine mandate will soon come into place for all U.S. employers with more than 100 workers, this means 80 million U.S. workers will have a choice between providing proof of vaccination or submitting to weekly Covid testing.

This presents a huge challenge for employers to stay on top of, without clear guidance on how. In this blog, we outline how you can use Kadence to help meet the new mandate requirements:

Put policy in place to meet the requirements of the mandate (proof of vaccination or weekly testing)
Protect vaccinated workers by preventing those without being vaccinated from entering the workplace
Visibility as to who is entering the workplace, with an audit trail of their vaccination status
Ensure a HR process to meet the vaccine mandate or a range of consequences could be administered (ie. termination of their employment contract)
Protect your company from potential fines from the government (over $10,000 per violation) by ensuring employees are adhering to local law and guidelines

Changing regulations with no standardization

Businesses around the world have been busy trying to figure out the best possible return-to-the-office plan to keep employees safe, but what we’ve been hearing so far – the challenge is that there is simply no gold standard or clear guidance for how these processes should be managed – what they are going to do at a tech startup may look very different from what a nationwide retail company is going to accept. In a post-pandemic office economy, setting up a safe office workplace is not enough, your return to the office plan needs to be agile, dynamic that works for your company and people.

Key considerations before implementing the mandate

Vaccine proof or weekly tests: Decide whether the company will mandate vaccination or allow unvaccinated employees to be tested weekly, be ready to have a policy in place to handle exemption requests.
Confidential process to track vaccination status: Employers should have the tools ready to implement a confidential process to request and track employees’ vaccination status.
Health screening process: If the company decides to allow weekly testing, make sure you have a process in place for health screening, also how should the testing costs be covered.
Be prepared to handle inspections: OSHA may ask for an employer’s COVID-19 response plan and records if it receives a complaint or inspects a workplace. Employers should also communicate the policy to employees regularly, and those in charge should be trained on how to handle an OSHA visit.

Self-certification to keep your employees safe

Self-certify is one of the key return to work features we’ve put in place that allows workplace managers to customize health screening policy and message, making sure employees are self-certified before going to the office.

In Kadence, you can find:

Self-certification that allows you to pre-screen employees before they check in to their reserved spaces
Flexible policy settings that allow you to change permission levels or communications to employees
Auto desk release functionality to optimize availability
Touchless mobile check-in to ensure safe experiences

Steps to customize policy in Kadence

We do not provide recommendations on what language to include, due to the varying governmental and corporate legal requirements and human resources policies, but we highly recommend you consult your human resources and legal teams to make sure you are meeting any legal requirements, while reducing and eliminating any unnecessary liabilities. If you have offices in multiple locations, you can create a policy specific to a location’s requirements if and when they differ from the requirements of another.

You can find the form to create and manage your policy by going to the Settings link in the lower left hand corner in the Kadence platform. It will be the first option to appear, or you can navigate to it by clicking on Policies from the menu options under the Settings header.

1. Give your policy a name

2. Select the building or buildings to use this policy – each building can only have a single policy, but multiple buildings can share the same policy.

3. Customize health screening message to make sure employees understand clearly before coming into the office.

4. Link to your company policy

For self-certification to work, you will need a link to your policy – this link can take employees to your complete policy, a link to your HR page, a link to the testing center the company is using, or any other government information. This link will pull up separately if the employee taps the View Policy button on the self-certify screen.

We do not maintain a copy of each individual’s completion of the self-certifications due to possible privacy restrictions which might apply based on the language you provide regarding your specific policy. However, there are ways to ensure the self certification has been completed by your employee.

Pro-tip: Use the free text field to provide instructions for how you want them to use the View Policy button.

5. Customize self-certification checkbox message (this is the text that will show next to the checkbox they will be required to check off to complete the self-certification and booking process)

6. Customize and select how far in advance of the booking when employees will be prompted to complete the self-certification process before coming to the office.

7. Prevent check-in without completing self-certification

This is the feature that, when used in combination with enabling Release Desks, can help you ensure that employees are completing the self-certification. All bookings will prompt the employee to check-in, but turning on this toggle will prevent them from checking in without completing the self-certification.

8. Release desks to optimize availability

To enable Release Desks, go to Bookings in the menu under the Settings header and you can choose between 15, 30, and 45 minutes after the booking starts to cancel the booking if the employee has not checked in. They will get another notification 10 minutes before their booking is cancelled prompting them to check-in. If they fail to check in before the time expires, they will get an email informing them their booking has been cancelled.

9. Keeping track of cancelled bookings

If you have enabled the prevent check-in (step 8) and release desks, then you will be able to use the data in Bookings (from the left hand main admin menu) to determine who completed the self-certification on any given day as their booking would appear in the Past bookings and those who did not complete it would show in the Cancelled bookings.

10. Communicate clearly to your employees

We recommend notifying your employees of this functionality when you create a self-certification policy using Kadence. We also recommend you explain the reasons you are using the Release Desks functionality before enabling it to avoid confusion and frustration when someone gets that email informing them their booking was cancelled. Reasons we encourage our customers to use Release Desks:

Enforce self-certification
Create a feeling of trust with your employees that you are taking steps to make sure people are safe when in the office, and to understand how you can best support their efforts while in the office
More reliable data about how your employees are using your office space, and the ability to make data-informed decisions

Wondering what it looks like in practice? We’d love to show you – book a demo here

Touchless workplace & de-densification: from guidelines to technology

Posted on May 5, 2020October 2, 2023 by Dan Bladen

The global Covid-19 pandemic will permanently change the way we use offices, it is safe to say it will never be the same again. Workplaces will be looking to follow recommended guidelines of how to introduce employees back to the workplace safely, and consultations between governments, employers and public health experts have led to guidance such as staggered work times, de-densification of workspaces, actions to encourage social distancing, and additional hygiene procedures such as creating a touchless workplace.

Before any type of return to work is even considered, businesses need to understand key concerns from employees and the requirements from local government, and review policies accordingly. Only then can they build trust and confidence among their staff to ensure they feel safe to return to the workplace.

One thing is for sure, the return to the workplace can only be Covid-safe if everyone participates. If things are overly burdensome, there’s not enough thought given to privacy considerations, or the policy sounds a bit too authoritarian, they will not get adopted and confidence in the workplace’s ability to adapt will be compromised.

Ensuring employees’ health and safety

As previously touched on during our interview about seamless business continuity with Keerti Melkote from Aruba, health and safety measures are the basics and top priorities for many businesses.

We looked at some of the best practices that are developing and actions that they are taking to ensure a Covid-safe and productive workplace experience for their returning staff. This will require smart integration of workplace technology to map and aggregate data on how spaces are being used, as well as integrating systems to create and trigger great experiences in those spaces.

Change is never easy. It takes time, clear direction and guidance as well as excellent communication to be successful. On a high level these are likely to fall into two categories, environmental changes and behavioural changes. Environmental changes are easier and more straightforward, such as HVAC, airflows and more operational aspects of the building. However, behavioral changes require the workforce to do things differently, for example adhering to policies to ensure workstations are cleaned thoroughly and coordinating use of shared desks, so that social distancing can be respected.

These habitual changes will take time to develop, and can be accelerated with the help of good training and clear communication. Data will also be the key for workplaces to make data-driven decisions, and the ability to take actionable insights on change.

Touchless technology in workspaces

One aspect that is sure to change is how we approach high-touch areas in the workplace. Many workplaces are currently investigating how the number of touch points can be reduced, but also looking at different contactless or touchless technology that does not require physical touch. Today, many of the solutions put in place have been reliant on touch technology, such as touchscreens to book a room or space, or to launch video conferencing. These conveniences now start to look like health risks in light of a pandemic.

What is touchless technology?

One possible solution is to shift the control of workplace environment to the one piece of technology that every employee has, the smartphone. A “tap to start” action on their smartphones triggers different experiences like check-in to a desk or meeting room, without the need for a physical touch with hardware. This is particularly relevant in an increasingly device-centric world, given the shift toward mobility and workplace apps where smartphones are at the centre of workplace experience.

How can touchless technology ensure our office is Covid-safe?

Touchless desk or room check-in
Quick launch video conferencing
Stay connected with remote employees more easily
Less desk clutter and fewer wires makes it easy to clean

Key Takeaways for a Covid-Safe, Touchless Workplace:

Limit the need to touch shared facilities to check in to desk and meeting rooms
UV phone sanitizing stations to clean and kill germs on smartphones.
Antimicrobial surfaces for device taps, rather than a physical touch such as touching a screen

De-densification of workspaces

With the need for social distancing in mind, many businesses will need to rethink their real estate and workplace strategies. There will be tension between optimizing real estate and cost per sqft, but also using space to allow for social distancing and de-densification. It is now more important than ever to use data to understand how spaces are being used, and make data-driven space planning decisions moving forward.

The pandemic situation will permanently change the way our workspaces are designed, and the technology that is needed to manage the use of those spaces. Some are saying that it could lead to a decrease in open-plan offices and a new mode of flexible working for smaller, more separated groups of staff to work in the office at the same time. Space requirements might not decrease, but there will be new space arrangements to allow for social distancing, and also identification of which and when spaces need to be cleaned and which are safe to be used.

Cushman & Wakefield has recently shared their vision of what the post-coronavirus pandemic office could look like — “the six-feet office” designed to encourage employees to intuitively practice social distancing. Installing beacons and sensors to track employee movement and seating which means employees can be directed to less busy areas. Co-working giant WeWork responded to coronavirus with a new proposal that would see new, less-crowded floor layouts and meeting rooms.

Key Takeaways for a Covid-Safe, Touchless Workplace:

Kadence’s real-time floor plan view shows how spaces are being used with regard to social distancing policy.
Kadence’s desk management solution shows where people have been sitting in your spaces and indicates which areas need cleaning and have the highest density of traffic.
Data then flows into the facilities team with a daily report to ensure an accurate and timely cleaning schedule

Clean desk policy

With the shift to de-densification and more flexible modes of working in the new normal, shared seating needs technology to help employees identify available desks in accordance with cleaning schedules and socially distanced arrangements.

Desks also need to be clutter- and cable-free to enable them to be cleaned quickly and not be a safety risk. Only monitors and stands should be shared, employees should use their own personal keyboards and mouse set-up, and should be suitable to carry in their bag.

Is your workplace Covid-safe and ready for the return to work?

The global Covid-19 pandemic has heightened sensitivity to cleanliness and employees will only feel comfortable at work if they know there are stringent policies in place for their safety. Effective workplace policies need to be driven and enabled by data and technology, and spaces need to be created that can respond to how they are being used. The use of spaces needs to be intuitive to enable a truly frictionless workplace experience.

If you’d like a chat with one of our team about getting your workplace ready for the new era of work, why not pick a time in our calendar to suit you?