Developer blog - Introducing Safety+

Safety has always been at the heart of Sign In App. Since our very first version was released back in 2015 with the goal of replacing visitor books, we’ve maintained the belief that having an accurate record of everyone on site can save lives in the event of an emergency.

Over the past few years, Sign In App has evolved and grown into a comprehensive workplace and risk management tool, used across thousands of sites worldwide. While we’ve continued to add features and functionality across all areas of the product, we’ve never lost sight of our safety focus.

Back in 2019 we introduced Evacuation Points for larger sites and last year we redesigned our evacuation reports to help streamline roll calls. We’ve also made it easier than ever to sign in employees and contractors which is key to having a complete list of everyone on site.

At the start of the pandemic, the development team worked quickly to introduce contactless options for signing in, health questionnaires and even allow sites to block sign-ins based on the answers provided. Hearing from our community that some sites couldn’t have opened without these features continues to make us immensely proud.

When sites started to reopen, we found that there were many more challenges still to come. The changing demands on workplaces to comply with regulations and adapt to flexible working practices have forced people and organisations to adapt at breakneck speed.

These challenges have brought site safety to the top of everyone’s agendas and we wanted to do more to help. Earlier this year the Sign In App team reviewed our current safety features, including evacuation reports and health questionnaires, taking on board feedback and suggestions from our community. Since then the team has been hard at work on a series of new features we’ve called Safety+.

This initial release of Safety+ includes our new shared evacuation reports and Safety Check, a brand new feature designed to help you manage health certificates and prevent high risk individuals from signing in.

Safety+ Evacuations

For many sites, having a central list of everyone on site in the event of an emergency is the primary reason for introducing a system like Sign In App. As a result it’s been our most popular feature and one that continues to be as important today as it’s ever been. Tens of thousands of drills and real evacuations have been conducted with Sign In App and we understand its critical importance to our community.

When we discussed how we could improve evacuations, the overwhelming feedback from our community was to introduce a single shared evacuation report that could be updated by users across multiple devices.

With our new Safety+ shared evacuations, users can start an evacuation or join one already in progress. As people are marked as safe or missing, the report is updated instantly in real-time across all devices, helping to identify those unaccounted for as quickly as possible. Communication is key in emergency situations, so we also added the ability to post comments during the evacuation which are shared with all participants.

By working together on a single report, evacuations can be completed faster with better communication than ever before. Once a report is complete it’s automatically stored in your online portal to be reviewed at any time. For schools with MIS integration, registration data from your MIS can also be read and combined with the data from Sign In App to build a single evacuation report.

Safety+ evacuations are available now. To enable the new feature, head over to our ‘How to’ guide and follow the instructions. Please note: A good internet connection is required to update evacuations in real-time, so we recommend arranging a drill soon after enabling the feature to confirm everyone involved can successfully update the report.

Safety Check

For us, site safety is about more than just efficient evacuations. It’s equally important to ensure people on site meet all relevant entry requirements. With some industries and venues now requiring evidence of vaccines or negative COVID tests before coming to site, we’ve developed Safety Check to help our community manage this process without storing unnecessary health data about individuals.

Safety Check allows trusted portal users to issue digital health certificates to visitors and employees following visual confirmation of a vaccine record or negative test. This record is stored in an anonymised format, protecting your guest’s personal data. Once issued, the certificate unlocks access to sites with strict entry criteria, ensuring everyone on site has passed the relevant checks.

In addition to health certificates, Safety Check’s block list also lets you maintain a list of high risk individuals, blocking them from signing in, or generating a notification to key members of the team on arrival.

To learn more about Safety Check, including health certificates and the block list, please click here and check out our ‘How to’ guide.

Safety+ as standard

It wasn’t long ago that even mentioning the words health & safety would be met with a roll of the eyes from many people (myself included). The term had become synonymous with red tape and policies for the sake of policies. If there’s one good thing that’s come out of this awful pandemic, it’s that people are taking site safety seriously and rethinking about how we manage the workplace, which will hopefully help protect staff and visitors for years to come.

For us, Safety+ is more than just a new feature to announce, it’s a commitment to our community that safety will remain at the heart of Sign In App and we’ll be continuing to add safety features at no additional cost as part of every site subscription.

If you have any feedback or suggestions around safety features you’d like to see, or if you have any questions about Safety+, please contact the team by emailing feedback@signinapp.com.