Office check-in system

Why you should rethink your paper visitor logbook

By Nick RivettProduct Marketing Lead
Published on November 17, 2020

The worldwide spread of COVID-19 has given rise to privacy, data protection, and security issues for businesses. These challenges drive organizations to go digital. Enabling them to enhance visitor experience while also keeping their employees safe and facilitating the guests in novel ways.

Unfortunately, very few businesses have frameworks that support fast, secure, and trustworthy tracking of their more important assets – their people.

This means going beyond the traditional visitor logbook with handwritten sheets of paper that are easy to lose. Besides, bad handwriting can make these logbooks impossible to read, effectively rendering them useless.

The case for a digital visitor logbook

It’s time to explore a digital visitor management solution that makes your information more useful, secure, and easy to access when need be. With a digital visitor logbook, it becomes possible to not only keep track of who comes into your office space but also when, why and who they are meeting.

Additionally, this data is secured in the cloud, so you can be sure that it stays safe from prying eyes.

You can even use digital visitor logbooks to keep track of self-screening survey results for your workforce. Plus, create wellness checklists that must be followed every time they check-in or check out.

Timely access and sharing of this data can also aid your understanding of the spread of the coronavirus and improve the effectiveness of your employee health and safety policies.

Key considerations for going digital 

These days, businesses are moving their data to cloud-based visitor logs to ensure the safety of their staff and visitors. But more importantly, this migration can help streamline their sign-in processes and enhance productivity in the workplace.

Here are several ways digital logbooks can help your business:

Going contactless in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic

A PwC survey revealed that 35% of the employee want their supervisor to inform them about any such exposure to COVID-19. A digital visitor logbook can help you gather the information needed to keep track of any possible vulnerabilities in the workplace.

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, you wouldn't have given a second thought about taking food deliveries, greeting guests, or checking packages at the front desk. But these activities involve proximity and physical contact with unknown individuals, and it’s no longer safe to practice these carelessly. 

This situation necessitates instant touchless check-ins so that guests can be registered before they ever set foot on the premises. Then your digital visitor management system can email them the pertinent information such as QR code for check-in and any screening questions or site procedures.

And when they arrive, they can easily check-in via a QR scan. Visitors then receive a digital badge that’s their ticket to walk in – no long queues by the register to sign your name!

A digital visitor management system allows you to track the contact information of anyone who enters the facility. That way, you know who to communicate with in case of exposure to COVID-19.

ensure data privacy with a digital visitor logbook

Ensure data privacy

Easy access to guest data means that anyone can see it and possibly misuse it, leading to privacy breaches.

Furthermore, a traditional visitor logbook reveals the information about the companies and contractors you have had a meeting with, which again, comes under violation of data.

These improper arrangements to protect info leave a wrong impression on the visitors, making them reluctant to share their sensitive information. As a result, they become sceptical about your company's reputation and credibility.

On the other hand, a visitor management system ensures visitors' data confidentiality and protects it from illicit users in the best way possible.

Mitigate security threats

With digital logbooks, it becomes easier to protect the people, processes and property that your business values.

Besides, with a streamlined digital badge system, it becomes easier to identify unwelcome visitors.

When someone arrives at your premises, proves their identity, and has an email appointment, they get a digital badge featuring their credentials and the host’s name. They’ll have to keep it on their person while they are in the building.

Anyone without a badge can be easily identified as an unwelcome visitor and treated as a possible threat.

This way, a digital logbook can also augment facial recognition, ID scanning and watch lists security features you may have in the workplace.

Consider environmental factors

Paper logbooks aren’t just inefficient, but they also leave a bad impression on your environmentally-conscious guests.

A large building with many entrances will likely go through several paper books and registers over a week. These must be stored securely when they are full, so no unauthorized personnel gets access to them.

A paperless digital logbook doesn’t have these problems as it helps lessen paper usage and wastage, ultimately reducing the environmental impact of your business.

This way, your workplace uses fewer resources that can be a threat to the environment.

Security of data

Many organizations regularly audit their facilities for IT controls and related processes. With a digital logbook, it becomes easier to get the necessary documentation and know exactly who goes where in the building.

The clunky paper logbooks can get lost or misplaced, which means you can't depend on signing in entry books for long.

Managers are more cautious than ever of privacy breaches, including any issues that may arise at the front desk. With a digital logbook, all such concerns are eased as anyone who enters the facility or specific areas is appropriately documented with verification and authentication.

Ready to deploy a digital visitor logbook?

It is critical for businesses to rethink their visitor management needs and implement a dependable solution to protect employee and visitor safety, improve efficiency, and leave a good impression on your guests.

Sine offers a digital logbook that allows for touchless check-ins, preliminary screening, and temperature checks, letting you customize the people flow management to meet your unique business needs. 

With Sine's digital visitor logbook in place, you don't have to worry about data security as it guards all your critical information in the cloud and maintains the visitor's privacy.

Ready to switch to a digital logbook that mitigates your visitors' safety concerns? Book a demo with our team today!

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