The Importance of a Visitor Management System for Schools

Since 2009, the percentage of schools that limit who can come and go from their grounds has increased to almost 100%. This effort is useful to protect the students but can also have a significant burden on the school staff. How can you increase security without demanding more of your school’s employees?

A visitor management system for schools can help ease this burden. This article will explain how to keep the same level of staff output without compromising student safety. By the end, you should understand why so many schools are choosing to use a visitor management system.

Comprehensive Security

By installing a visitor management system, you can start the process of limiting who can enter certain areas of the facility. Through the use of RFID readers as well as other methods, you can allow staff and visitors to sign themselves in and out. This will not only track when they have entered the school but also where they travel while they are there.

This method of tracking also allows you to limit access to certain areas of the school. If you have a visitor, you might want them to only be able to enter specific areas. Using a comprehensive security interface, you can do this and more, ensuring that they do not stray from their allowed locations.

This also helps to streamline the methods of checking if someone has the right to be in a specific place. If you want students and staff to have the agency query a person’s access right, they only need to ask them to use their access key and see if it works.

Faster Processing

Visitor registration can take up a lot of time for anybody working at the front desk of a school. This is especially true of repeat visitors, whom you might want to have the ability to enter or leave at will so long as it is related to their work.

Instead of needing your reception staff to write down the details of every person, you can offer them the use of an access token. Using this, they can record all their details on the token and use it whenever they enter. If the desk staff need more, they can still ask for it, but this would handle a lot of the basics.

Lack of Staff Distraction

Without any lobby management software, you might have staff who worry when they see someone new moving through the corridors. With student security at an all-time high, they might feel the need to question the visitor about their right to move through the school.

By creating a system that tracks these kinds of things, your staff will be more comfortable. They will know that anybody who has entered will have signed in using a detailed interface and have received access from the staff. This allows teachers and other staff to concentrate on their students instead of anything else.

As the visitors also spend less time around the entrance, reception staff can get on with other things that their role entails. On especially busy days, they will not need to register each visitor slowly. They could instead allow the system to perform most of the work.

Simple Interface

A well-made interface for visitors will allow your staff to have a degree of control over the access rights of visitors. Better software might also have a virtual receptionist or greetings for those who use the application. This allows the visitor to feel welcome even if your staff are all handling other issues.

Once a user checks in, the system can also offer a plethora of other information. This includes maps of the school, calendars of events, or instructional videos about the facility itself. Of course, for security reasons, you should limit this information to only people who need access to it.

Zero Busywork

By using visitor receptionist software, you can save all your staff time from some of the more detailed parts of their role. This allows them to focus on giving a friendly face to any guests instead. Tasks that a well-made automated visitor system can complete include:

Group Check-ins. By creating pre-made groups, you can ensure that all of a specific group enter or leave areas together. You can also check them all in at the same time instead of individually.

Employee notifications. A member of your staff might want to know when a specific individual enters the school. This may be for reasons of security or out of politeness.

With a good management system, staff members can request notifications when the person checks into the building. This prevents unexpected guests from surprising staff. It can also help prevent a person from feeling unwelcome by allowing the staff member to greet them faster.

Badge printing. On first entering an ID into the system, a management system should have the facility to create a unique badge based on these details. The method should not be complex, and the badge should contain the access token that the visitor needs to move around the school as necessary.

Face mask verification. COVID is still a relevant issue for many schools. Thus people should be encouraged to understand that many facilities still have rules about face masks.

A verification system can remind visitors to wear masks when necessary, at times when the school deems it prudent.

Temperature checks. Advanced visitor management systems even have hardware that can check the temperature of guests. This can provide an extra level of protection to the immune systems of everyone in the school and reduce the number of absences due to illness.

Pick a Visitor Management System for Schools

You should now have a better understanding of why a visitor management system for schools can help your security efforts. If you now want to ask for more details about what further benefits one of these would afford you, you can always get in touch with our sales team.

Our specialists can talk to you about what installing this kind of system entails and what it would grant. So, give us a call today and start your journey towards a safer, more efficient school campus.