The Importance of an Effective Visitor Management System

What is a Visitor Management System?

A visitor management system is the process of tracking everyone who enters your building, office or site. It could be a visitor, a customer, a delivery person, a job applicant, temporary employee or a contractor. Essentially, anyone who is not a regular employee is considered a visitor. 

Traditional Visitor Management Systems

The typical visitor management system is an old-school sign-in book, usually kept in a folder at the front desk. When a visitor arrives, they write down their name, who they’re there to see, and the time they arrive. The receptionist then notifies the host that their visitor is waiting at reception. At some point, that sign-in sheet gets filed away, shredded or lost and a new sheet is produced. 

Electronic Visitor Management System 

A busy reception can be challenging in today’s world, and keeping track of visitors is no longer a straightforward task. While it might be easier to tell how many visitors are currently on your site, would you know how many were on site 6 months ago? While it might be possible to find this information, it’ll take a lot of time to go through files and folders or excel spreadsheets. As this data is often required for audits, so you want to have it on-hand.

Other questions relating to visitors include:

• Do you have a record of who each visitor met with during their time on site?
• Did all visitors sign out when leaving? Or did some forget to?
• What other information is missing in the visitors’ log? Time checked in, car registration, etc.?
• Are the check-in and check-out times accurate? 
• Some companies have unattended reception areas and lobbies. What happens in this instance? What do visitors do when they arrive? It’d be nearly impossible to determine who was coming and going with no one there to greet them. 

These scenarios are common in offices worldwide, and they highlight the need for some kind of visitor management system. To combat these issues, more and more people have started to look to electronic visitor management systems as a means to be more efficient, but also for compliance, security, projecting a positive corporate image and reporting.

Compliance

Some information or documents might be required by visitors before they come to site. There is also a need to make visitors aware of site procedures, potential risks and health and safety requirements. This can all be easily managed using an electronic visitor management system.

Security & Emergencies 

One of the major benefits of an electronic visitor management system is the ability to know who is on site, who is expected and when, what type of visitor they are, who they are visiting, where are they visiting and their identity. All of this information can be made available instantly and is vital information for your security team, as well as assisting in the event of any emergency on site.

Corporate Image

Moving away from paper-based visitor logs and sign-in sheets to an electronic system can help your company portray a professional and modern image.

Reporting

Paper-based visitor books do not provide you with an efficient audit trail (such as how many visitors attended site, where and who they visited). While this can be done manually by going back over visitor logs, it can be very time consuming. Simple and quick reporting can be processed using electronic visitor management systems.

Ultimately, electronic visitor management solutions can simplify reception tasks and ensure the smooth processing of visitors upon arrival. This allows you to be certain that your health and safety obligations have been met and that your site remains secure. 

VelocityEHS Control of Work provides a Visitor & Security solution that allows you to manage all site visitors and contractors from one screen. The system can identify if the person visiting the site will be performing work and, in the cases they are, it will specify safety and approval requirements that need to be met.

Other features of our system include: 

• Central Booking Platform
• Traffic Light Status
• Map & Driving Directions
• Print a Badge
• Location Based Approval
• Identify Work Taking Place
• Recurring Visitors
• Visitor Calendar
• Record Keeping

If you’re considering moving to an electronic visitor management system, reach out to see how VelocityEHS Control of Work can work for your business.