HID Global has augmented its HID Location Services with a new Workplace Safety application that will help enforce social distancing protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic. The solution utilizes the company’s Bluetooth Low Energy HID BEEKS Aware fobs, which can be used to gauge the distance between two people who are carrying a fob or a BEEKS badge.

To encourage social distancing, the system will flash and send out a brief audio alert if it determines that two people have been standing within two meters of one another for more than two minutes. However, administrators can configure the system to trigger at longer or shorter intervals if they have their own social distancing requirements.

The technology can also be used to support contact tracing. HID Location Services generates an auditable record of everyone’s path inside a given building, and the fobs will let administrators know who each person was in contact with, and when that interaction occurred during the day. That information will make it easier to take appropriate countermeasures and isolate compromised individuals if an outbreak does occur.  

“Digitally managing social distancing is critical to encouraging the behavioral shifts that will create a safer and more secure environment to which employees feel comfortable returning to work,” said HID Global Identification Technologies VP Mark Robinton, “Our goal is to make it easier for everyone to adjust to workplace physical distancing and taking the manual leg-work out of contact tracing.” 

Organizations interested in the social distancing feature would obviously need to issue BEEKS Aware fobs to any employees, visitors, and other contractors that enter the building. The contact tracing utility can be delivered with the platform’s current ID badges.

While HID Global has placed a strong emphasis on hospitals, its Location Services can ultimately be deployed at any commercial venue. The company is already piloting the system at its own headquarters and manufacturing facilities in Texas. Gartner named HID Global as a Leader in Indoor Location Services in its latest Magic Quadrant report.