Managing Contact Tracing at Events
As events return, and as part of the COVID-Secure guidelines, all conference and exhibition organisers need an effective plan for keeping track of who came to the event and when. The good news is that most events already do some of this already and so taking it further should not be too difficult.
Here’s our suggestions for developing a plan for your event:
Manage Bookings and Monitor Contact Tracing
If you haven’t already switched to an online event registration system then now is the time. Yes, you can carry on with a spreadsheet, but a proper event booking system will give you much better control & flexibility. It will also be the backbone of your contact tracing capability as you will have a central list of potential attendees.
At a simplistic level, you can manage invitations and RSVP’s through a registration platform, but better systems will offer much more flexibility.
Log Arrival & Departure Times
Of course, knowing who might come to the event is pretty irrelevant when it comes to reporting for any contact tracing. You need to know exactly who did attend and when.
You can use event technology to do this with minimal cost. If you already do badging then it can all seamlessly join together to make for a simple, fast and safe arrival process.
If people were sent a QR code ahead of the day, self check-in stations can be used to validate the attendee and mark them as having arrived.
Who, Where & When
For larger events, there might be a number of different spaces in use. Like a plenary room, breakout sessions, an exhibition hall and refreshment areas. In an ideal world, you want to be able to identify who was in which space and at what time.
A really accurate way to do this and keep in line with contact tracing protocols is to either scan attendee badges or wristbands. If you are not using badges, you could have the delegate present the QR code on their phone that they used to check-in on arrival at the event.
Data Management & Reporting
All of the data that you collect, before, during and after your event will need to be managed well. Your responsibilities for capacity management and safe data management continue to apply - even in a pandemic. In fact, you might need to tighten up on your data management processes as you could be using new suppliers and event technology.
Make sure you have agreed with attendees what data you will be collecting, what you will do with it and how long you will retain it. You will need to have data processing and reporting agreements in place and ensure that they are operating in a way that aligns with your data policies.
If you need any help managing an effective contact tracing system at your exhibition or conference, please do get in touch with the UK Event Registration Experts.
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