Coronavirus has caused a number of restrictions across various industries that include guidelines and regulations on how many people can be in a building, how many can meet, social distancing, face coverings etc.
Ensuring that a business has no more than the correct number of occupants in a venue at any given time has never been more important.
In the UK , the hospitality industry has set guidelines regarding face coverings, social distancing and socialising outdoors where possible.
These guidelines have now become legal requirements and those who break the rules will receive fines of up to £10,000 per regulation breach.
It’s not only in the UK fines are being used as a way to enforce new safety regulations, Smithfield Packaged Meats Corporation in the United States have recently received the maximum fine by law for failing to protect its staff from COVID-19.
Coronavirus and an opportunity to improve visitor and occupational safety
Surprisingly, even during the Coronavirus pandemic, many business owners still feel that investing in workplace safety will have a negative impact on productivity and finances.
A report by Liverpool Hope University highlighted the link between Coronavirus and the opportunity to improve occupational safety, which all ultimately lead to an increase in productivity and profitability.
The authors argue the point that pandemics and epidemics are not just medical phenomena, they have social, economic, and behavioral consequences that require knowledge and action from all industries.
Using technology to improve visitor safety
We’ve seen many venues – supermarkets and highstreet retailers for example – implement a one-in-one-out strategy, where a member of staff stands at the entrance to control the flow of visitors in and out of the store in a bid to manage the occupancy limit.
Manually counting people in and out is an inefficient way to collect numbers of visitors. In addition to this, many businesses are having to employ additional members of staff to assist, incurring the costs associated with it.
Due to these inefficiencies, businesses are seeing a reduction in operational effectiveness; negatively impacting their bottom line.
Purple’s new occupancy software overlay allows venues to automatically count the number of people coming in and out of their venue, removing the need for human interaction.
Our contactless, automated solution allows businesses to connect sensors directly into our analytics tool, and depending on the type of sensor, i.e. 2D or 3D, businesses will be able to achieve up to 98% accuracy when counting visitor numbers.
Businesses can also adopt a hybrid model, whereby they connect different hardware types depending on the accuracy levels required in a specific area. All of the data collected is completely anonymous, removing the need to worry about privacy concerns.
Automated alerts trigger when occupancy levels reach a set point, notifying staff to take action to maintain a safe and working environment. Venues can also set up alerts that prompt staff to clean an area following set visitor usage levels; improving operational efficiency.