Organizations are analyzing the result of the pandemic-enforced work-from-home experience to reimagine how work is done, the role of offices and the importance of safe workspaces.

At the same time, employees are looking for assurance that they will be protected along with their peers and their families if they come to the office.

As such, organizations are incorporating new regulations and guidelines to ensure physical distancing and restrict movement in congested areas (e.g. washrooms, cafeteria, conference rooms). Employers are also evaluating the phased approach and reclassifying their workforce into segments to bring employees back to the office as things start to reopen. Finally, cost-effective ways are sought to implement safety and wellness measures such as social distancing, contact tracing, air purification, while ensuring optimal output with a smart, long-term technology investment.

Cooper Lighting Solutions is an organization with over 5000 employees and 17 sites globally. As a part of its safe return to work policy, it has developed a list of regulations and guidelines to ensure employees’ safety. By leveraging its connected lighting system Cooper Lighting Solutions delivers an accurate and reliable solution to help with the compliance of these regulations and guidelines. 

Cooper Lighting Solutions partnered with ZulaFly to create a safer work environment and help ease the transition back to work by enabling workplace social distancing enforcement, capacity management, and contact tracing. This solution is capable of not only providing value during the pandemic but can also generate additional efficiencies and return on investment to help organizations thrive in the post-COVID-19 world.

This white paper outlines how Cooper Lighting Solutions and ZulaFly technologies partnered to help CLS provide a safe environment and how the same solution can be used by others to enforce workplace safety.

The Cooper Lighting Solutions headquarters is a 581,000 square foot facility located in Georgia about an hour south of Atlanta. There are 650 employees working at the headquarter offices and manufacturing facility. 

The Cooper Lighting Solutions Health and Safety Department first implemented social distancing regulations within the office by limiting the number of employees within closed and common spaces. 

Second, the department also needed a contact tracing system that would allow the organization to act if a staff member contracted COVID-19. 

In addition, the team identified other challenges with regards to workplace safety:

• Inability to locate which employees were in the office as there is no badge in/badge out policy and the staff can enter and leave the building together as a group.
• Inability to ensure that capacity limits are being adhered to.

• Need to segment employees in groups to assign specific work weeks.

To overcome the above stated challenges, Cooper Lighting Solutions in conjunction with ZulaFly developed safe return strategies.

Cooper Lighting Solutions leveraged the WaveLinx PRO Bluetooth (BLE) embedded luminaires and sensors capable of receiving location data from wearables

(beacons). The location data was then utilized by the ZulaFly system to perform analytics and create a safer environment. 

All employees were given a badge or a wrist tag to be worn inside the facility. Additional displays were installed in common areas dedicated to allowing employees see in real-time the headcount within the space and view alerts if the area capacity exceeded. 

The employees’ identities were kept hidden and only the Human Resources manager had access in case of an event.

The ZulaFly system used the location information from Cooper Lighting Solutions’ WaveLinx CORE Locate application to:

• Set capacity alerts for conference rooms, collaboration areas and cafeteria to ensure a limited number of employees use the space at any given time. When the number of people in a certain area exceeded the threshold, the system generated an alarm, and a text /email was sent to the facility manager.

• Generate contact tracing reports. By being able to trace, monitor and record every contact and interaction in real time that employees have had, the system can quickly help identify individuals that might be at risk or have been exposed to an infection. It also tells you where they were and how long they were in contact with each other.
  

• Help combat the spread of infection. Employees were assigned a particular group. Each group had a specific week assigned when they could be in the office.
  

• Alerts were generated when an individual from Group A was in the office with Group B.

Along with ensuring employees feel safe at work, the system helped increase efficiency as no manual intervention was required and processes were automated.

The implementation of a real-time location system at the Cooper Lighting Solutions facility was a success as employees felt safe, company norms were followed, efficiency increased as no manual intervention was required to check how many people were in a room at any given time or the employees coming into the office were from the A or B group.

Value of using Cooper Lighting Solutions location services with ZulaFly:

• Accurately locate employees in a facility using floorplan and list views.

• Effectively reduce the spread of infection through contact tracing and capacity alerts.
  

• Understand how your space is being utilized.
  

• Automate critical processes.
  

• Create geofences and get alerts /notifications in real-time when a rule is violated.
  

The COVID-19 pandemic is pushing the need for location-based decisions in a time-sensitive manner for overall response and recovery. Returning to the workplace safely and confidently requires additional awareness of spaces — which are available for use, where people can work while maintaining social distancing, and where people have been in the facility. In support of COVID-19 recovery, Cooper Lighting Solutions recommends the WaveLinx CORE and ZulaFly solution in the office space to ensure employee safety.