Schools are always looking for ways to anticipate emergency situations and enhance security for students and staff. While it can be hard to know where to start, one simple and effective way to do this is through the implementation of a visitor management tool. Screening school visitors, maintaining up-to-date visitor profile information, and properly logging visits, helps schools have access to critical information that can help keep people safe should an incident arise. In this blog post, we’ve outlined three ways schools can enhance security using visitor management tools.
Fast, Customizable Screening
Visitor management tools provide schools with much-needed visitor transparency and accountability. Each visitor scans their government-issued identification upon their initial visit to the school. Visitor management software reads that information and automatically creates an associated visitor profile for that individual while simultaneously running their credentials and photo against watch lists, the National Sex Offender Registry, injunction and legal issue records, and a school’s custom-banned visitor lists. Some solutions utilize facial recognition software to eliminate false positives during this screening process to ensure that security notifications are accurate and immediate. If no red flags are raised, a visitor badge is printed (if enabled), and the visitor is allowed to check into the facility.
Schools can implement customized screening procedures, and visitors are automatically screened against those restrictions upon each check-in attempt. Faculty and staff will no longer need to stress about personally remembering all of the red flags for each visitor by allowing Visitor Aware, Singlewire Software’s visitor management tool, to screen visitors automatically.
Accurate Automated Screenings
Visitor Aware excels at making the identification process easier for schools. By using our state-of-the-art facial recognition software, we eliminate the possibility of a false positive. If our software displays a match to office personnel, it is because the credentials and facial biometrics of the visitor match that of the person within the corresponding database. Not only does our identification process help prevent unnecessary stress on office personnel, but it prevents sending out false alarms that tie up additional school personnel resources that could otherwise be utilized elsewhere.
If a positive identification is made, alerts are sent out via SMS Text, email, pop-up prompts, and desktop notifications. Office staff can view the match and access the associated offense details to know what protocols to set into motion. Another beneficial feature is our SRO Notifications. If a Security Resource Officer is available at the school, they can be immediately notified when a positive match is made, as well as when a visitor checks in or when a student is signed out. We take this a step further and have an SRO user role setup where Security Resource Officers can screen a visitor through their personal mobile devices. Notification type preferences are specified on a per-user basis and allow each user to set up their account to their communication preferences. Our job as a visitor management company is to create a process that helps our clients feel more at ease and streamline their current school visitor management responsibilities, not add additional complications.
Automatic Flagging for Visitors with Injunctions
By utilizing technology that was specifically designed to help schools remember these important details, schools can remove this burden from office staff and automatically screen visitors for any red flags that may exist. These red flags include active injunctions such as child custody issues, no contact orders, and other court-issued documents, as well as custom alerts for parental concerns related to associated family members and/or other individuals, explicit school-specific bans on individuals, anyone listed on the National Sex Offender Registry and anyone listed on international as well as national watch lists.
An excellent tool that can be utilized by schools to aid their office employees in remembering these important details is a visitor and volunteer management software called Visitor Aware. By implementing Visitor Aware, school employees can enter their custom red flag information into the system so that each individual is automatically screened upon entering the school. This process also allows faculty and staff to be notified only upon legitimate concerns, therefore, eliminating false alarms, unnecessary stress, and wasted time.
To learn more about Visitor Aware, don’t hesitate to reach out to our sales team with any questions or concerns on how they can help support your school’s visitor and volunteer management goals.