Geofencing can create a dangerous false sense of security when a phone battery dies or a user disables tracking, leaving you with an incomplete site occupancy record. Under the WHS Act 2011 in Australia and OSHA regulations in the United States, you are obligated to account for all personnel; a failed geofence means a failed muster.
Failing to account for on-site personnel is a breach of duty
In our work with Australian and US organisations, we see that PCBUs under the WHS Act 2011 and employers under OSHA are legally obligated to ensure the safety of all persons on site. If your system fails to register a person because of a technical glitch, you cannot fulfill your duty of care during an emergency.
Automation that ignores human and hardware failure
Many organisations rely on “invisible” check-ins, assuming technology is foolproof. This creates a gap where the digital record suggests a site is clear while people remain inside, unseen and unaccounted for because they didn’t “trigger” the fence.
- Mobile phone batteries draining or going flat, which renders the geofence entirely useless for that individual.
- Employee reluctance to enable tracking due to privacy concerns or the desire to preserve battery life.
- The failure to capture unregistered visitors who are not already in the system as registered contractors or employees.
- Dependency on hardware that can be left in a vehicle or turned off, leaving the person on site but off the record.
Integrating automation with verifiable occupancy data
A robust cloud-based visitor management system ensures that automation is a convenience, not a single point of failure. It combines contractor induction and check-in with real-time occupancy tracking and offline capability to ensure no one is missed.
- Mandating contractor induction and check-in before site access is granted to ensure compliance.
- Providing multiple sign-in methods so that a flat battery does not result in a missing person.
- Generating a real-time evacuation report that is accessible from any authorised device during an incident.
- Utilising muster point verification to cross-reference live digital data against physical presence.
Time and People: Visitor Management That Works When It Has To
We convert complex compliance obligations into reliable infrastructure through cloud-connected visitor management and real-time evacuation reporting. Across 12 years in Australia and the United States, we’ve found that relying solely on a mobile device for safety is a risk no PCBU should take. We focus on ensuring every person is accounted for when every second counts.
Content prepared by Time and People — visitor and contractor management across Australia and the United States.