With companies finally
Automated solutions company, Talon, launched a mobile app in November to help track and report COVID-19 symptoms. Now, as more offices return to normal, the app can reduce the necessity of hiring front-line medical workers to take temperatures at the office entrance.
“[Employers] were getting tired of hiring temporary contractors to take temperatures,” says Talon’s CEO, Rodney Dir. “Now facilities are using [our app] for their employees to come and go into the office on a daily basis without having somebody to meet them at the front door.”
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Workplace health and safety is a top priority as employees make the decision around returning to the office. Nearly two-thirds of employed Americans who went into an office prior to COVID-19 are concerned about the cleanliness and hygiene of the office upon their return, and more than half would like to see an increase in sanitization strategies, according to findings from a survey released by hygiene and health company Essity.
Talon’s application helps reduce the risk of COVID exposure by providing employers with real-time symptom-tracking and captures the GPS, date and time of the locations the user visited while in the app to cross-reference with COVID-19 hotspots, according to a release.
As an added prevention measure, employees will be provided a temperature scanning device upon entering the facility that records the findings to their app. And because the application is rolled-out through individual companies’ HR departments, the data can be integrated with entry access systems where employees will be turned away if they’ve reported health conditions where they shouldn’t be in office.
“It provides a record that the company can review,” Dir says. “So if [an employee] does have a high temperature or any kind of symptom it's an immediate notification to the HR department.”
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The return to work has proved to be a
For Dir, this technology has value far beyond the pandemic.
“Eventually COVID won’t be the primary purpose of it anymore,” he says. “Rather than reporting health conditions, they’ll be reporting the safety conditions of whatever standards the company is putting in place for all their employees.”