As the government considers how soon to lift the lockdown, the prospect of more South Africans returning to work is both a welcome and worrying prospect.

The question is this: how to fight a potential second spike in infections in compliance with government safety protocols as we attempt to reopen the economy?

That’s where a new smartphone app by Solution House comes in – helping us all return to a post-COVID-19 work environment with confidence, knowing the threat of reinfection is being moderated effectively in a way we can all control.

How it works

The COVID-19 People Management Solution app helps employers to manage their compliance with government-stipulated COVID-19 safety protocols by giving them an easy way to identify and manage information around employee infections.

Tiaan Janse van Rensburg, Solution House Director: Business and Commercialisation, says the app is based on Incident Desk, a global service request, routing and management engine used for national urban management and public safety.

The app enables employers to easily register staff, log daily health checks and screenings, and identify Persons Under Investigation (PUIs).

“Working in conjunction with the Incident Desk back-end management portal, it enables quick retrieval of employees’ status, history and personal information. In addition, it helps companies using outsourced service providers such as security, cleaning and maintenance services to ensure that they, too, comply with government regulations and have completed daily health checks and screenings.”

What are my responsibilities as employer?

The government requires adherence with the following COVID-19 health and safety practices when employees return to work:

• All employees must be screened daily for symptoms, submitting to symptom and temperature checks at work.
• There must be workplace protocols in place for disease surveillance and preventing the spread of infection.
• These protocols and screenings must be documented and logged on a daily basis for each individual employee.

“While the last requirement is possible with productivity applications like Excel, or as part of a more advanced payroll or HR solution, these applications do not provide for quick and easy unique identification of employees, their status history and personal information,” says Janse van Rensburg.

“More sophistication is needed in a solution managing that, and yet more if a company makes use of outsourced workers and needs to be satisfied that they comply with health checks and screenings, have themselves been checked, and are healthy.”

How does the app help?

The Incident Desk COVID-19 People Management Solution manages all stages of the COVID-19 information process, including daily health checks; screenings; identifying PUIs (Person Under Investigation); testing; medical management; contact tracing; and outcomes.

The app offers role-based access and security for various user roles:

• Employees who log their own health checks
• Managers who log health checks on behalf of an employee, and
• Medical professionals who receive alerts regarding PUIs and who can perform further functions such as tests or medical management on the same platform.

Health checks and incidents can be logged and shared between multiple service providers and entities such as companies and their outsourced service providers, as well as viewed on a national, provincial or employer level, depending on access rights. The user registering their employees on the app has complete control to select who they want to share the employee information and health history with.

Facial recognition is used to identify employees, individuals being scanned and service providers, in compliance with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) to uniquely identify, register and retrieve a person’s information.

Doing it right

“In the interests of balancing personal and public safety with economic welfare, everyone supports returning to work – but it has to be done right,” says Janse van Rensburg. “This is not just another compliance burden, and we would urge organisations to get the right tools for the job.”

For more information, pricing or to view a smartphone app screen recording, please visit https://www.myincidentdesk.com/covid-19peoplemanagement or e-mail info@myincidentdesk.com.