Access control systems are often used for evacuation reporting and employee sign in and sign out for time and attendance. I have seen over the years access control systems set up in businesses for time and attendance where employees need to swipe one device for IN and one device for OUT. This same information is then used for a rudimentary evacuation report. The evacuation report will only have employees in this instance.
Another common situation you can see in many businesses is where the door access control system is used for evacuation reporting or employee time and attendance on site. There is only one way an access control system could possibly work well enough for evacuation reporting and time and attendance for employees. The only way this could work is for the access control system to have turnstiles or electronic gates that only allow one person in or out at a time.
If you don’t have access control turnstiles like these pictured below you have two very good reasons for not using your access control system for evacuation reporting.
1/ Tailgating
Every time an employees swipes to go through a door with their access control card the next employee can tailgate through the door not swiping at all. Go into any busy building and 2,3,4 or more people can tailgate behind the first employee who swiped in with the access control. The evacuation report is flawed in this instance.
2/ Access control systems do not capture visitors or contractors
Access control systems are designed to grant access to approved people, this can consist of employees, contractors like cleaners and more. Problem is when we start talking about evacuation management we are not capturing visitors into the building and we still have the problem above tailgating.
Visitor Management systems are designed to work with Access Control systems
……You may need a Visitor Management System
Visitor Management software is designed well for a single location or multiple locations, after setting up your first location you can add more locations easily. You can also set employees that roam across multiple locations to be able to receive visitors at each location not just the location they are based at by setting the employee to global roaming in the employee profile you will be able to have all employees quickly sign in and out of each location including the employee in the locations evacuation report.
There are several ways an employee could sign in and out of a visitor management system multiple ways to include all employees onto the evacuation report. Evacuation reports for any building should include visitors, employees, contractors and any other person who is in your building.
Employee sign in and out with existing access/proximity card
The fastest way for employees to sign in at out of the visitor management system is with an RFID card. You can attach a USB RFID reader configured for existing access control cards or we can supply RFID cards configured to a PC, laptop or tablet running our software..
Employees simply swipe in and out as they come and go.
Employees sign in and out with free app
Employees can download the free smart phone app included with the software that allows an employees to sign in and out from the app.
Employees sign in and out with employee in/out board
You can set up an app on a smart device and employees can sign in and out
Employees can sign in on their own PC
