Each day, thousands of fleets—from long-haul truckers to local public transit—take to the road to get people and essential items where they need to go. Historically, monitoring vehicle performance, routes and hours, and driver safety was imprecise and required time-intensive manual work. Samsara changes the game with their industrial IoT solutions. Over 20,000 organizations rely on Samsara’s GPS-tracking devices and software to maximize their fleets’ efficiency and safety.

The company aims to foster a culture of safety amongst their customers and within their own four walls. Keeping employees safe on the job, especially those working with industrial equipment or hot tools to build the company’s signature hardware, is paramount. So when the coronavirus pandemic hit, Samsara’s Workplace team needed a way to ensure office critical employees would stay safe and healthy.

Providing employees a safe place to do their work

After California ordered residents to shelter in place, Samsara’s hardware team found themselves attempting to solder and test devices from their living rooms. Elyse Hill, Workplace Manager in Samsara’s London office, explains, “The lack of space and technical equipment made it nearly impossible for hardware teams to work at home.” Bringing employees back to offices amid a pandemic wasn’t an easy decision to make. However, as Nicole Persaud, Samsara’s Safety and Security Programs Manager, explains, “We had to ask ourselves, ‘Is it safer for employees to be soldering at home or in the office?’ It’s safer in the office where we have the appropriate setup to mitigate those hazards.” When they were able to, Samsara’s Workplace team decided to reopen their San Francisco and London workplaces for office-critical employees.

To comply with local directives for reopening, Samsara needed to roll out several new health and safety measures. In addition to requiring face coverings in the office, optimizing their HVAC system, modifying food service, and increasing their janitorial staff, Persaud and the team needed to confirm that employees were low-risk for spreading COVID-19. They also needed to limit the number of people on-site to no more than twenty percent of their max capacity.

At first, their on-site Workplace teams grappled with how best to ask each person questions about their health and possible exposures as they walked in. When it became clear that a scalable and robust solution was needed, Samsara’s team looked to Envoy for help.

Making workplace access touchless and more efficient to manage

Today, Samsara uses Envoy to certify that employees and visitors are symptom-free before they enter the office. Hill notes that her favorite part of Envoy Protect is “How easy it is to set up, adjust, and roll out globally across all our offices.” Now employees complete Samsara’s health check using the Envoy mobile app on their phone before commuting to work. External guests scan a QR code at the front desk and use their phones to complete Samsara’s health check without touching any shared surfaces.

Only employees who pass Samsara’s health check can use their badges to access the building, thanks to an integration with Samsara’s access control system. Persaud says, “Connecting Envoy to our badging system enabled us to streamline our daily check-in process and remove obstacles that slowed down entry such as manually confirming that the health screening was completed. That was time-consuming for employees and our security team.”

“Connecting Envoy to our badging system enabled us to streamline our daily check-in process and remove obstacles that slowed down entry such as manually confirming that the health screening was completed.”

The Workplace team uses Envoy to share office-related announcements with employees through the mobile app and engage with employees who fail their health check. “The ability to see what question triggered an alert makes it easy for our Security and Safety team to reach out and discover if the individual is sick or they accidentally hit the wrong answer,” says Hill.

The Workplace team also relies on Protect to tell them how many people are currently on-site and how many to expect the next day so that they can stay under capacity. Hill explains, “The ability to set site-specific occupancy is critical to ensure we are sticking to city or council guidelines and recommendations.” If an office reaches capacity, Samsara’s workplace team receives an alert from Envoy, and Envoy prevents any other employees or visitors from registering.

Giving employees the confidence to return to work

Samsara’s Workplace team now has more time to focus on other work critical to a safe reopening. “Protect allows us to register employees, activate badges, and respond to health alerts faster and with greater efficiency,” Hill says. “We’re able to report on our office occupancy with greater confidence and provide our employees, vendors, and visitors an easy-to-use solution to ensure they are COVID-symptom-free.”

Employees now feel more comfortable heading to the office. “Envoy, in conjunction with our other safety measures, provides peace of mind for our employees and encourages them to return to our offices globally with confidence.”