As the demand for temporary workers continues to rise, staffing agencies and their clients continue to adopt new methods to improve their operational strategy in the time of COVID. Safety requirements such as staggered shifts, social distancing, contactless punch in/out, and wearing PPE have become a daily standard for organizations.

As unemployment rates continue to fall and with the holiday hiring rush fast approaching, it’s now more important to ensure that safety and health regulations are followed and employees are kept safe. Contact tracing is one of the most important yet time-consuming measures that can be taken to prevent a pandemic spread in the workplace and ensure successful business continuity.

Contract tracing in the workplace usually involves a mixture of good communication and scanning data. It’s an important tool because it allows employers to identify those who have potentially come in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. With accurate identification, the exposed individuals can then be notified to self-isolate or get tested which in turn slows the spread of the disease.

Contact tracing methods have taken many forms including logbooks or an Excel spreadsheet. Unfortunately, these are still being manually done and are very time-consuming. For instance, contact tracing within a huge workforce working multiple shifts can prove to be difficult. The prospect of manually scanning through each individual timesheet and identifying which employee among hundreds of hourly workers could have possibly used a specific time clock in a particular shift can be quite daunting for anyone.

After business operations slowly returned to normal, federal and state health regulations were quickly enacted to protect workers. Aside from choosing to work for employers that have good safety measures in place, a recent survey showed that an overwhelming 86% of employees believe employees are obligated to notify them immediately once a co-worker has tested positive for COVID. Due to the time-sensitive nature of contact tracing, our clients quickly realized the need to automate their contact tracing method to protect both their employees and business operations.

It was easy for our team to quickly automate the contact tracing process within the WurkNow platform. Last July, the contract tracing report feature was officially launched as part of WurkNow’s Product Release 31. All the information needed for contact tracing was already being automatically tracked by our workforce management platform such as employees working during a particular shift, their start/end time, worksite location, and even the particular time clock used to punch in/out. By creating an automated report that collects all these data in a matter of minutes, our clients are able to have access to a clearer picture and make quick decisions without wasting time scanning through hundreds of data. In addition to that, the WurkNow contact tracing report also ensures that business continues to protect employee privacy during the contact tracing process by giving users the option to exclude names in the official report.

The goal remains the same, to retain quality employees and make sure they are healthy and safe. Contact tracing is an important part of the process that businesses need in order to ensure that their workers remain healthy and operations continue not only during the holiday rush but all year round. Workforce management technology such as WurkNow aids in automating time-sensitive processes that allow businesses to make quick decisions and keep operations running.

COVID-19 cases are rising as winter moves in. As Thanksgiving and more holidays are approach, the CDC expects cases to continue rising. During the next months, it’s more important than ever to follow the updated COVID-19 Employer Guidelines to protect employees and business continuity with efforts such as touch free time tracking options and digital inventory tracking systems.