Employees Sign In at the Lobby

Should Your Employees Sign In at the Lobby?

If not, they probably should. But not with a conventional time clock check-in system.

By implementing or overhauling your employee check-in and check-out experience, you can reap a ton of great benefits. It’s actually similar in many ways to implementing a visitor management system. In fact, you can actually use your visitor management system to also manage your employees’ ins and outs. 

In this guide, we discuss the benefits of creating an employee sign-in system with your visitor management system.

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Why Should Employees Sign In at the Lobby?

Let’s start things off by tackling the top question at hand: Why should you ask your employees to sign in at the beginning of their workday? This is a particularly important question if your employees are salaried and you don’t need to log their hours. Is it worth the extra hassle to ask your employees to sign in every single day?

Employees Sign In at the Lobby

There are many benefits to asking your employees to sign in on a daily basis. Here are the top reasons why you should:

Keep Track of Your Employees

The first benefit of using a visitor management system for your employees is an obvious one: It allows you to keep track of your employees. However, there are also not-so-obvious benefits you’ll gain by tracking your employees. This is especially true if you’re operating a hybrid work arrangement where some of your employees work exclusively from home, some exclusively from the office, and others exercise the flexibility to choose when and where they work. 

Tracking your employees allows you to know which employees consistently use your office. This can help you determine if you should keep your physical office at its current size or possibility downsize in the future.

Improved Security

By keeping track of everyone who’s in your building, and not just visitors, you’ll be able to provide better security for all. Use your visitor management system to see who’s in your building at a glance. You can use these records to determine if everyone who’s on the premises should be there.

In the case of an emergency, you can rely on your accurate and always up-to-date visitor management system to immediately see who’s presently in the office. This will help you effectively communicate to the fire department or law enforcement if you need to evacuate or handle a threat of violence.

Consistent Check-in Experience

One easy-to-overlook benefit to implementing this system is that you’ll offer your employees a consistent experience. Businesses often unintentionally neglect their employees in favor of creating an optimal experience for their visitors, especially their customers. However, your internal customers are just as important because they power your business. Likewise, they deserve professional treatment when they arrive and depart. 

You can offer a high-quality experience for your employees that is on par with your visitors’ experience by implementing a digital employee registration process. If your employees are accustomed to signing in using a paper log book or clocking in with an app, they appreciate the elevated experience of signing in using a digital kiosk. The check-in/out process is smooth, automated and consistent for both visitors and employees. 

Provide Temporary ID Badges to Hybrid Workers

If you operate a hybrid workplace, some of your employees may only come to the office on a limited basis. For example, these employees may only show up in the office to participate in special events such as an all-hands team meeting. In this case, having an employee check-in process is crucial because it provides an easy way for employees to sign in without waiting for manual approval from management. 

While it may add an extra step to your employees’ day, implementing an employee sign-in process proves to be more beneficial than negative. The trade-off of asking your employees to devote a few seconds at a check-in kiosk is worth the added safety of knowing who’s in your office at all times.

Employees Sign In at the Lobby

What is a Visitor Management System?

You may be wondering what a visitor management system is and how it’s different from a traditional clock-in system.

A visitor management system is a tool that allows you to welcome visitors into your office and efficiency track their whereabouts as they move through your building. With a visitor management system in place, you can always know who’s in your building and their purpose for being there. 

A visitor management system will increase your in-office security. It will also help you to maintain more control of who’s in your office and where they may go. You can also gain insight into how many people visit your office on a regular basis, and why. This set of powerful analytics will allow you to plan better for the future and improve the in-office experience for your visitors and your employees alike. 

Would you like to see our visitor management system in action? Click here to join a free product tour for The Receptionist for iPad.

How to Use Your Visitor Management System for Employee Check-Ins and Check-Outs

You can actually use the same visitor management system for both visitors and employees. In the same way that a visitor management system allows you to keep track of the visitors who come and go in your facility, the same tool can be used to track your employees as they arrive and when they depart. Here’s how:

How Visitor Management Systems Work

To understand how you can use a visitor management system for your employees, let’s first look at how visitor management systems work.

When a visitor arrives at a facility, they first sign in to let their host know that they’ve arrived. Traditionally, a visitor will sign in on a paper log book. However, when using a visitor management system, the visitor will sign in digitally using a kiosk found in the lobby. 

The kiosk will capture all of the visitor’s information, such as name and contact details, and automatically alert the host of the visitor’s arrival. The kiosk may also print out a visitor ID badge and provide instructions on what the visitor should do next. 

When the time comes for the visitor to leave, they’ll return to the registration kiosk again, this time to sign out. This final step is crucial because it allows you to maintain an accurate record of who’s in your building at all times.

Here’s a look at how you can use the same visitor management system, The Receptionist for iPad, as an essential part of your employee check-in and check-in process:

When your employee arrives, they can go to The Receptionist for iPad kiosk in your lobby area. You can either use the same check-in kiosk as your visitors use or you can designate a second kiosk for employee use only. 

Employee check-in at the kiosk can be a simple process. The employee can click a series of buttons to initiate check-in, starting with “Employee Check-In.” From there, they can enter their name or employee number and then check in. 

If you wish, you can offer contactless check-in for your employees. This allows your employees to check in and out without physically interacting with your kiosk. Instead, your employee can scan the QR code with their smartphone and sign in remotely. This can expedite their check-in experience. 

As part of the check-in process, you can issue temporary or semi-permanent badges to your employees. These badges can expire within hours, days, weeks, or longer, depending on the type of employee. 

The badge can include a photo of the employee as well as a QR code that they can use to scan themselves into restricted areas within your office. Management can also be notified automatically when an employee arrives and departs the office.

Would You Like To See an Employee Sign-In System?

Click here to request a customized demo of The Receptionist for iPad and see how we can help you manage your employees’ check-in/out experience.

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