Employees in all sorts of businesses are naturally wary about returning to office-based work once the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic has receded. Even though large numbers of people are being vaccinated, people who have been excluded from a physical office environment for so long are highly aware of any potential risks that may be posed to them.
Helping companies assuage those fears within their workforce, and supporting a safe return to the office, is something that Traction Guest, a global partner of Condeco’s, specialize in. Founded in 2015 and operating from bases in Vancouver, Seattle and Dublin, they provide a Workforce Security Platform that incorporates many different functions that helps keep employees and visitors safe: visitor management, health and safety controls, critical outreach and alerting, and analytics and auditing.
As Roger Lall, VP of Product Marketing, Traction Guest explains:
“Thousands of partners, integrators and customers leverage the API-driven, low-code platform to solve complex security, safety and compliance challenges, so workers around the world can confidently connect and collaborate.”
Enabling hybrid working
With hybrid and remote working set to be common practices in the post-pandemic business world, Traction Guest needed to ensure that its solutions were well-suited to changing employer and employee needs. To do this, we are proud to have partnered with Traction Guest to integrate workspace management and resource scheduling into their system.
This means that through Traction Guest’s platform, employees can now check into office environments using contactless scanning and access a pre-booked workstation or meeting room. Furthermore, they can feel confident that the office building is safe for them to work in, as safety screening, capacity management and even sanitization needs can also be managed through the platform.
“Partnering with Condeco was a natural fit in order to address the new physicality of the hybrid work environment.” Lall says.
Furthermore, he highlights that “remote, flexible, mobile and other non-traditional workforce models experienced during the pandemic are here to stay. The ability to deploy Workforce Security and Workspace Management in a seamless manner is a critical requirement for HR, EHS, Security, and other enterprise stakeholders.”
The value of technology
With so many considerations to take into account, managing a safe, COVID-secure office can be a highly complex undertaking. It’s also an extremely important one, not only in terms of encouraging employees to get back into office work, but also in complying with any rules and regulations that may remain in place in the longer term.
Lall feels that technologies such as those provided by Traction Guest and Condeco can help bring all these considerations together and support the practicalities of new ways of working: “Technology will be the enabler of hybrid work. Scheduling, collaboration, engagement, monitoring, security, and more will all become more challenging, and require innovative approaches, in order to create permanent, stable, and productive work environments. We will see point solutions become platforms, localized implementations become standards, and single audience solutions become ubiquitous.”
More than COVID
As businesses return to the office in the months and years ahead, it will be critical to remember that there are other challenges and concerns beside COVID-19. Other factors such as social issues, diversity and inclusion, the environment and sustainability should all be considered as a more permanent working model is put into place.
Lall believes that the upcoming period of change as the post-pandemic business world begins provides a golden opportunity to improve things in a variety of areas: “How can we make workplaces more flexible and accommodating to diverse employee groups? Does Health & Safety have to be permanently reprioritized? Who is responsible for managing duty of care requirements? Where does the scope of security start and stop? These are issues we tackled as a one-off over the pandemic, but there is an opportunity to drive permanent positive change if we can extract broader lessons.”
Take a look at Condeco’s partner program for more information, and how you can become a part of the team.
