How to Optimize Your Workplace Visitor Policy

After you've created all the basic policies for your place of work — sick leave, vacation, and general HR policies — workplace policies start to have a new point of origin. Often, they're born out of a place of need after an incident arises. Employee safety or behavioral incidents with your employees give cause to revisit and update your policies.   

Regarding your workplace visitor policy, however, it's best to be proactive. Visitor incidents can lead to lawsuits, theft, data loss, and compliance penalties. So how can you get ahead of workplace management regarding guests?  

Most facilities commonly have guests, contractors, or couriers entering the workplace daily. You need an optimized visitor policy to protect the visitors, your employees, and your organization.  

This article discusses why creating and optimizing a visitor policy for your workplace is essential and how you can take control. Learn how to bring your visitor management strategy up to speed with innovative software, touchless sign-ins, and digital visitor management systems. 

Why You Need a Workplace Visitor Policy 

Your visitor policy addresses much more than security risks; it also offers employees a better workplace experience. 

Security 

Your workplace security practices protect the people inside your facility and the workplace itself when it comes to your contractor and visitor safety policy.   

Unidentified intruders have many opportunities to damage or take property. Since many organizations have hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars worth of resources inside their buildings, any instance of property damage or theft can be costly and time-consuming. The damage can be even more severe if intruders access sensitive digital information. For some organizations, it could even stop their ability to do business for a while. 

Workplace Induction & Entry 

Regarding the workplace experience, employees and visitors will find it easier to follow and understand a clear entrance policy. Those with an employee ID can enter freely, and those without one go through a sign-in procedure. For employees, this policy removes any hesitancy around who is in the building and whether they should interrupt their work to ensure visitors are valid. 

Non-associates, under an effective visitor policy, will be asked not just to identify themselves but also to categorize their type of visit. Visitor management kiosks can print photo ID badges for visual confirmation of: 

• Visitor Authorization 
• Purpose 
• Visit Type  

This aids security teams while providing employees with the peace of mind that fosters a productive work environment. 

Make your security team's job easier by taking care of routine entrance logging with visitor management software. 

Developing Policies to Keep Your Workplace Secure 

You have options when optimizing your existing visitor policy to keep your workplace safe and revamp the visitor experience. The core options include: 

1. Investing in software 
2. Visitor tracking software 
3. Implementing ID badges 
4. Touchless sign-in processes 
5. Categorizing office visitors 
6. Using a digital management system. 

1. Invest in Visitor Management Software

Innovative visitor management software goes beyond tracking visitor types, entries, and exits. It also offers an automated experience that checks off all your workplace safety and security requirements. Investing in facility management software saves the entire organization time and resources by simplifying the entry process while maintaining high security standards, regardless of your industry. What does that look like? 

• Eliminate manual visitor validation for fast and accurate entries. 
• Automation speeds up deliveries without sacrificing workplace security. 
• Returning and pre-registered visitors have expedited sign-ins, avoiding lengthy, repetitive form fills. 
• Third-party watchlist integrations control building entries in real-time. 
• Notifications immediately notify hosts upon the arrival of guests and VIPs. 
• Emergency notifications can go out to all people in the building, from visitors to staff, with instructions and muster points. 

Visitor management software (VMS) performs efficient screening, validation, and monitoring of guests. iLobby offers high-tech, easy-to-use visitor management solutions for workplaces looking to improve their visitor policies. 

Learn more about VMS benefits and strategies with: The Ultimate Guide to Visitor Management. 

2. Monitor Guests with Visitor Tracking Software 

Plain and simple, pen and paper visitor logs are not reliable. There is no guarantee of accuracy, and visitors often skip filling out important steps and information.   

Inaccuracies can have repercussions in real-time, leading to missed meetings or, worse yet, missed emergency notifications. When gathering data for reports or audits, inaccurate logs strike again. Additionally, paper records are often ruined, lost, or forgotten long before they're needed.  

In contrast, using digital logs for visitor management provides accurate and easily recalled visitor data. An online real-time dashboard provides access to immediate and historical data at the click of a button or tap of a screen. 

3. Require All Visitors to Have Identification Badges 

When inducting visitors into the workplace, visitor passes are common practice. But you can go one step further and streamline the process with automated ID badge printing. This way, visitors come in with their ID badges, and the person they came to see receives a notification with the visitor's information. If a visitor has arrived for an interview, the greeting is smooth, and other employees understand who the guest is.  

A tablet check-in system can capture and include a picture of each entrant on their visitor badge. This makes them easy for hosts to spot and doubles down on ID verification. The best visitor management systems implement onsite badge printing directly into the sign-in process.  

Learn more with: The Advantages of Visitor Badges. 

4. Streamline Your Check-In Process with Touchless Sign-In 

Check-in kiosks with touchless sign-in processes are now a necessary element of any sign-in procedure.  

In workplaces with a heavy flow of people, avoiding common surfaces where bacteria and viruses thrive allows for safer, more hygienic offices. Touchless sign-in systems can include vaccine confirmation, health questionnaires, temperature checks, and other health and safety precautions to keep visitors and workers safe. 

5. Identify Visitors by Type 

Categorize your guests by visit type to simplify sign-ins. Depending on your organization, you may have a wide variety of deliveries, interviews, and employees. Your workplace visitor safety policy can include a pre-approved list of guests, for example: 

• Personal visitors 
• Contractors 
• Employees 
• Returning visitors 
• Interviewees 
• Meeting attendees 
• Event staff 
• Delivery staff 
• Custom 

6. Use a Digital Visitor Management System to Create a Solid Visitor Policy 

With all these tools at your fingertips, you have complete control to optimize your visitor policy. Make your visitor entry processes easier, more efficient, safer, and more secure for your whole company with visitor management software.   

Your visitor policy benefits your entire organization by implementing digital visitor logs, ID badges for all guests, and a touchless sign-in procedure. Security personnel can focus on high-priority tasks, like security breaches, while having access to guests' locations at all times. Daily operations become more efficient through a collective awareness of where guests are and whom they're meeting.   

Ready to update your workplace visitor policy? Book a demo today.