Improve health & safety in food production with a visitor management app

Health and safety - the most significant words in the food production space. There’s various legislation that food production organisations must follow which require them to present certain policies, agreements and questionnaires to both visitors and staff.

Whilst companies are aware of this and have procedures in place, it’s often no fun for the receptionist or the visitor - pages and pages of paper to complete is not the way you want to welcome your guests. Not to mention, once they’ve filled out a questionnaire it’s not all done and dusted; this needs to be read through to double-check whether they can go into food production areas.

With advances in technology, food production facilities can now ditch the pen & paper and maximise their health and safety compliance with a visitor management app. Below are just a few of the reasons why visitor management apps have the perfect recipe for food production organisations.

Present relevant health and safety policies

Various visitor management apps now allow you to automatically present policies and agreements to those signing into your building; so there’s no need to rummage around trying to find the paper version. You may also prompt visitors to perform an action such as ticking a box or signing their signature to agree that they have read the policy.

Many of these apps also give you full flexibility to change the content of policies, agreements and questionnaires so that they’re bespoke to your organisation and can be easily updated when required should the content need to change.

You may also have the option to choose which content you present to which groups. For example, you may not need to show all policies and agreements to the visitors that are not visiting the production areas.

Ask important health questions

Asking health questions has always been important in food production facilities. However over the past couple of years, the requirement for these has been heightened. A visitor management app can enable you to get your visitors to fill out the health questionnaire through the app rather than filling out a paper copy; this can automatically be presented to them when signing in.

Some apps may then allow you to have your visitor’s answers communicated with relevant people in the business. For example, if someone answered ‘yes’ to a question regarding an illness, you can set the app to notify relevant people to deal with this.

Control who enters food production areas

In a food production facility, there needs to be control over who enters food production areas for health and safety purposes. As mentioned above health questionnaires are used to find out whether there are any reasons a person should not enter a food production area such as having an illness which could cause a risk of contamination. A visitor management system may allow you to reject a sign in if a certain response was given to a health question, preventing the visitor or employee from entering further onto site.

Some visitor management apps may also enable you to create a block list to prevent any high risk individuals completing their sign in. Notifications can be sent to allow you to manage this according to your site’s specific requirements.

Contactless sign in options

Limiting shared contact can be really important in food production areas in order to maintain excellent hygiene. This is where contactless sign in options from a visitor management app can be really helpful. Visitor management apps can enable you to present a dynamic QR code on the reception tablet for visitors and employees to scan using their personal smartphone and complete the full sign in process. Some apps may also allow you to print static QR codes onto posters for areas where a tablet may not be suitable.

Emergency evacuations

Food production facilities should have a strict emergency evacuation procedure in place in case of fires or major incidents. In these instances, it’s crucial that you know exactly who has been in the building during the day. This isn’t always a quick process when using a paper visitor book.

A visitor management app can make emergency evacuations much smoother. Some visitor management apps have a mobile version of the app where you can access an accurate, up-to-date evacuation list of who has been in the building. You can then identify who is present when taking a roll call and if anyone isn’t present you can locate them by seeing who they were visiting. You may also be able to assign different evacuation points to different groups and enable multiple fire marshals or employees to join a shared evacuation report during an emergency roll.

Sign In App is a visitor management app that offers everything mentioned above included as standard in your site subscription. If you want to improve health and safety compliance in your food production facility, get in touch to find out more about how Sign In App can make your processes simpler. You can find all the ways to contact us here, including live chat which is available 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. Alternatively, if you’ve already got an iPad then you can get started now with our 15-day free trial here.