Reception should exit the building immediately; they must not risk their safety by stopping to collect physical logs or tablets. In Australia, the WHS Act 2011 requires PCBUs to ensure a safe workplace, and OSHA in the United States mandates effective emergency action plans. Prioritising paperwork over immediate evacuation creates a life-safety risk and a significant compliance failure.
Your duty of care is to evacuate, not to audit
In our work with Australian and US organisations, we have found that the legal obligation to protect lives outweighs the desire for a perfect paper trail. Under the WHS Act 2011 and OSHA guidelines, the priority is a swift, safe exit for all personnel without delay.
Paper logs turn receptionists into liabilities
Many organisations still expect reception to grab a visitor book or tablet during an alarm, which creates a dangerous bottleneck. This process relies on data that often fails to track who has actually left the building, leaving the organisation exposed to extreme liability.
- Physical logs only record who arrived, not who is currently on site.
- Stopping to collect a tablet or book delays the evacuation of the front-of-house area and puts staff at risk.
- Manual boards are often impossible to remove quickly from walls during a real emergency.
- Relying on a single person to carry the only copy of the site occupancy list creates a critical single point of failure.
Real-time data replaces the physical scramble
A cloud-based visitor management system removes the burden from reception and puts the real-time evacuation report in the hands of the wardens. This ensures that muster point verification is based on live data accessible from any authorised device.
- Visitors and contractors complete a digital check-in, including a mandatory contractor induction and check-in where required.
- Administrative staff maintain the live site occupancy report by signing out absent employees, such as those calling in sick.
- Upon evacuation, reception exits immediately without stopping for hardware or paper.
- Fire wardens access the real-time evacuation report via a mobile app or authorised device at the assembly point.
- Muster point verification is performed digitally to identify missing persons instantly.
Time and People: Visitor Management That Works When It Has To
We convert complex compliance obligations into working infrastructure through cloud-connected visitor management and real-time evacuation reporting. Across 12+ years in Australia and the United States, we have found that removing the physical book from the evacuation process is the only way to ensure staff safety. We focus on protecting people, not just checking boxes.
Content prepared by Time and People — visitor and contractor management across Australia and the United States.