As smartphones and handheld devices have come to play a more direct role in all our lives, it’s unlikely you’ll ever find an employee or visitor heading into a building without a smart device.
For business owners, facility managers or anyone working in HR, this smartphone ubiquity is a godsend. You’re able to make use of these devices, and their QR code scanners to effortlessly check in and record all employee, visitor, contractor and assets across your operations.
Implementing a system that can provide QR codes, like Sine, into your workplace will provide you with glanceable insights into deliveries, visitor data and details which include who is working on which project and much more!
Below we’ll take a look at how and why you should be using QR codes for visitor management.
If you take a look around your local shopping center, on a McDonald’s soda cup or the entryway of a local business, you’ll likely spot countless QR codes.
These QR codes are small barcodes that are scannable by smartphones and tablets with QR code scanners built into their camera software, or third-party apps. Primarily a QR code is distributed to provide information or initiate a specific action on a device.
In various industries, these codes are implemented for use in everything from mobile payments, marketing, flight check-ins and more. Analysts are even predicting global QR code scans to break through 5 billion within the next three years, certainly making a case for implementing QR codes into the workplace.
All a customer, employee or client has to do is aim their smartphone or tablet’s camera at the code, and the device will follow the instructions outlined in the 406 bytes of data held within the QR code. This instruction could be anything from opening a website or registering a workplace check-in.
Think of a QR code as a way to seamlessly blend the ‘real’ world with the digital worlds inside our phones and tablets.
Now that we've touched on what QR codes do and how they work, it's not too complicated to see tremendous potential with regards to visitor management.
You may be familiar with traditional paper methods of visitor management, which typically involve a staff member taking a visitor's information, writing it down in a log book and storing it in a filing cabinet or entering it into a digital program afterwards.
This may be an adequate means of visitor documentation and management, but it's inefficient in just about every sense.
For this process to work effectively, a business will always need someone on site to handle check-ins and check-outs, which often take a minute or two, creating bottlenecks at peak times. To expand, if there's no staff member on site, you’ll have no way of knowing who has entered or exited a building — you may even need to shut for the day.
The 21st Century Solution
To a more modern solution now, QR codes provide businesses with an accelerated check-in and check-out process, even when facilities have no staff on site.
Your business will no longer need to have a dedicated check-in employee, though HR managers and facilities managers will still be provided in-depth and accurate insight into who has entered and for what reason.
A few of the insights and features that QR codes offer include:
All of this information and insight can be used in everything from forming better experiences for employees, through to understanding when visitors tend to arrive on site. You’ll have the data that tells you at what time to redirect staff for better handling of predicted spikes in foot traffic.
A quick flash of a smartphone's QR code scanner is all it takes to check someone in, record their check-in time as well as let you know precisely who is checking in and for what reason. If this process is paired with extensive visitor management software platforms such as Sine, you can make use of entire dashboards and suites of information that QR codes and Sine work cohesively to create — more on this below.
There are a myriad of benefits that come from implementing QR codes at visitor hotspots and workplaces, especially when they’re paired with versatile visitor management platforms like the aforementioned Sine.
In the most general sense, a smartphone QR scanner and a visitor QR code explicitly created for visitor check-ins enables an entirely seamless sign-in process for guests. One snap of the QR code with a smartphone and every procedure is complete.
A few other benefits include:
If you’re a manager in HR or site manager interested in understanding more about who is entering or leaving a location or a work site - either to visit or get some work done - you’ll immensely benefit from integrating QR scanner checkpoints into your business.
As expected, scanning QR codes is entirely effortless. Once you’ve chosen a visitor management platform like Sine, you can begin implementing your QR code management solutions across your business’s site to gain valuable information and improve check-ins and track assets.
Here's how your visitors and contractors check-in process with Sine would look like:
Just by following these four simple steps, your business and staff will be better prepared for visitors, contractors and assets arriving or leaving your site.
