Green Templeton College, University of Oxford

Green Templeton College is a graduate community at the heart of the University of Oxford and strives towards its commitment to academic excellence. It brings together students, academics, and practitioners with a particular focus on business and management, health and medicine, and social sciences. With over 650 students and 80 university staff, as well as numerous suppliers and visitors potentially on site at any one time, Green Templeton College wanted to address community welfare and security by modernising its visitor management solution within its traditional Oxford setting.

Despite its wide range of accommodation and facilities, Green Templeton College did not have a visitor management system in place which was causing an array of challenges, such as the visibility of contractors on site and which staff members were present around campus. As such, the College was looking to deploy a streamlined and secure system to keep track of all personnel on site and remove the opportunity for anyone to access the College’s facilities that could pose a concern for those remaining on campus.

Daniel Cooper, residential lodge manager, Green Templeton College comments: “When I started out in the position of Lodge Manager, I was very surprised that there was no stringent visitor management solution available so it was my priority to implement a robust solution as soon as possible. As a duty of care for the College, it is imperative that the array of people accessing the facilities always remain safe and secure. The solution from Sign In App provides a seamless way for the College to manage everyone allowing them to sign in and out via the portal placed at reception or more conveniently by the ease of the downloadable app, ensuring that everyone – regardless of student, staff, or visitor – adheres to the same protocols.”

Initially, Green Templeton College deployed Sign In App primarily to understand the whereabouts of students and staff when it came to routine fire drills – to observe if they were signed into the building or not. Previously there was no way of quickly and accurately understanding how many individuals were on campus so it was routine to check all the hallways and communal rooms to ensure that everyone had evacuated quickly – a potentially dangerous exercise in the event of an actual incident.

With the onset of Covid-19, tighter requirements and controls were implemented by Green Templeton College which relied on using Sign In App in a smart and robust way to ensure that regulations were adhered to within the overall setting. Quickly and efficiently, the College was able to target students at sign in stages and prompt them with a pre-populated health questionnaire allowing the College to keep a track and trace system and the virus at bay. In real-time, the College is able to use the array of visual dashboards and records to see who has signed in and out – particularly useful in the event of a fire evacuation. Furthermore, management has the opportunity to drill down at a granular level and view individual responses to questionnaires, and are able to flag any results that could be a concern, such as if someone is declaring any Covid-19 systems.

Another area of deployment where Sign In App has generated insight is monitoring who accesses the health and fitness facilities – enabling the College to understand who is a repeat user or visiting for the first time. Using the system here negates the need for any paperwork and ensures that students using the gym equipment have adhered to the waiver and gym rules prior to use.

Cooper continues, “The biggest hurdle was getting senior management to embrace this period of change as they had initial fears that having a technology-based system in place could be overwhelming and questioned whether it could be adequately maintained. As I was able to explain the benefits of implementing a visitor management system and the multitude of problems it would overcome – any queries were quickly addressed and the tool rapidly set up. Collectively within the College, we’ve set the standards high and many other facilities are looking at rolling this out too which is great to hear. From me, the key takeaways are how versatile the whole system can be and the level of functionality and reporting which is accessible for my role – such reporting requirements have been understandably exacerbated throughout Covid and ensures that duty of care is put first!”

Dan Harding, co-founder, and CEO of Sign In App comments: “Despite the difficulties the last year has presented to the education sector, it’s been great working with institutions like Green Templeton College that are tackling these challenges head-on. With our out-of-the-box solution, fit for any industry and market, visitors – or in this case primarily students and staff – can log in and out at a tap of a button ensuring that safety and welfare are prioritised. Without a doubt, Covid has accelerated our product roadmap and it is evident that our solution is adaptable to everyone’s changing needs: from its flexibility for Green Templeton College displaying health-related screening questionnaires, the hybrid workforce, or visitor management of facilities and accommodation.”

Cooper concludes: “For us, Sign In App’s greatest achievement has been the proactivity portrayed across their staff within the various teams – from Sales to Onboarding. They are always easily approachable, and whenever I have a question or suggestion they are always happy to listen to my ideas from a user of the tool and how the system can be enhanced later down the line.

“In a nutshell, Sign In App was transformational for the College before Covid, but it would be impossible to imagine not having it during and post-pandemic. I would thoroughly recommend taking the approach to all other educational institutions.”