How will you create safe and healthy environments, post-COVID-19?

Security teams across the world have been doing amazing work in keeping people and environments safe during the Covid-19 pandemic. As key workers, the pressures upon them have been great and many have found themselves responsible for tasks far beyond their training and experience.

During this unprecedented time, security firms... are asking their teams to pivot. From planning the logistics and security for the world’s largest critical care units… to performing free local patrols to client premises during the lockdown, to volunteering to assist the elderly, vulnerable or ‘at risk’ individuals who are unable to leave their homes, security companies of all sizes are stepping up to the challenge.

But now as protocols are changing, governments are lifting lockdown legislation, and businesses are under pressure to find a ‘new normal’, what can heads of security do to ensure their team’s safety as they come into contact with more people?

A healthy and safe environment is for the benefit of everyone, and in this blog post, we take a closer look at ways management can protect their team, environment and members of the public, as the world slowly starts to open back up.

Creating a roadmap to recovery

Businesses aren’t going to get their environments functionally up and running again overnight – it’s going to take a roadmap to recovery. Not only do businesses have to consider the safety of everyone entering their spaces (and this should be the leading concern) but they are contending with:

• Pressures around a loss of revenue
• Online alternatives to physical, in-person retail and entertainment
• Proving return on investment for hardware and software to protect their environment
  
• A loss of jobs and the consequent change in roles of the workers who remain.

This has been an uncertain, frightening time for many people and therefore many are reluctant to return to ‘normal life’, even when their political leaders are telling them it’s safe to. In order to recover, businesses must: 

• Provide peace of mind for customers, employees and consumers
• Create confidence in the safety processes you’ve put in place
• Demonstrate leadership and assertiveness in securing your environment.

These things take time, and creating confidence with customers will be a gradual process. One of the best ways to assure visitors you’ve done everything you can to create a safe and healthy environment, is to initiate technology and science-backed methods. If customers see an established, methodical process at work in your environment, their confidence is far more likely to be restored than if they merely see a handwritten sign about masks or hand sanitiser. 

Restoring customer confidence

In order to win back the confidence of customers who have now been away from your brand, products and services for months, security teams need to adopt a three-pronged approach:

Health and safety

What new procedures, technologies and equipment have you implemented to safely screen and monitor people upon entering?

Education

How are you communicating expectations around behaviours such as masks and hand sanitiser once people are inside?

Awareness

How are you showing the world your awareness of your obligations to their safety? Are they reassured by you that your actions are sufficient?

Businesses need to provide members of the public with all of these in order to win trust back. Product Manager at IndigoVision, Ratish Kumar Mani, explains why the customer’s state of mind is so vital during the process of opening up businesses again:

It may be a business that a customer really likes. Then they go back and see that they haven’t taken sufficient security measures. The customer isn’t going to feel comfortable, even if it's their favourite place. So the biggest risk for businesses is not only the return on investment – the more people that come back and generate business, the better for their income. But it's that they're losing long-term loyalists and patrons who have a history of giving them custom.

The kinds of businesses that particularly need to restore customer confidence right now are: 

• Restaurants
• Shops
• Bars
• Entertainment venues

If your security team is responsible for these environments, then you might need an extra layer of safety measures to ensure people can return safely. One of the best ways to do this is through occupancy control at a kiosk set up outside the front of the building, before anyone even enters.

Providing a healthy ecosystem

IndigoVision offers multiple products to help businesses offer a superior solution to build safe and healthy environments. These can be used in tandem to create a comprehensive screening solution, or if you already have certain aspects of security covered, such as a thermal camera, you may choose to just invest in the software elements, such as Control Center or Agora. Here are the products we specialise in:

IndigoKiosk AI: This is an Artificial Intelligence system that tracks entrances and exits to limit the number of people in your premises, and ensures the optimum numbers for social distancing. A screen informs visitors if they are free to enter, using a traffic-light system. It can also identify whether a visitor is wearing a mask, and instructs them to put one on before entering.

Thermal Camera Temperature Screening: Our thermal camera temperature screening solution involves no human contact and deploys a hybrid camera with a thermal sensor and a standard 2MP optical sensor.

The blackbody: When used in conjunction with the thermal camera temperature screening, this heat radiator device measures a person’s skin temperature. The Blackbody is used by the camera as a reference point to measure the subject’s skin temperature.

Control Center: Setting temperature alerts in Control Center takes seconds. If a person has an average temperature then no alert is created and they can efficiently move through the screening process. A high-temperature result will create an alert for the operator to action.

Agora Command & Control: If the threshold temperature is exceeded then an on-screen alert appears and the Agora high-temperature procedures are activated. These will guide the operator in delivering the correct response to the results, and ensure a consistent approach that helps minimise human error. Through Agora, you can manage alerts, procedures and workflows, and create intelligence reports to help you monitor your results long term.

If you want your security team to be safe by keeping them away from customer-facing positions, these tools give them everything they need to monitor their environment from their control room. Likewise, if you still plan to use security guards at entrance points, it gives them an extra level of safety to do their job and observe social distancing. 

Key takeaways

• Returning to ‘normality’ will be a long journey, but it is the job of businesses to provide safe and healthy environments in the meantime, which can scale and adapt to changing requirements.

• Not only is this essential to customer wellbeing, but in re-establishing a business’ security responsibilities to their staff – including security guards who have already put themselves at increased risk throughout the pandemic.

• Businesses cannot expect members of the public to engage with them again unless they show they are doing everything in their power to create a robust ecosystem. Building trust should be at the forefront of all organizations’ minds.

• There are multiple products on the market to do this, with superior solutions from IndigoVision. Investing in these now means you will be prepared for the future, however long social distancing measures last.