Informing a PRM and facilitating access to the building for visitors

Since April 20, 2017, buildings receiving the public have been required to have access for People with Reduced Mobility (PRM), such as a second sloping access path to facilitate entry for wheelchair users. Your premises, if they date from after this decree, are not lacking in this respect. The main access is therefore often perfectly adapted to a person with Reduced Mobility, but it's once inside that certain problems can arise. Elevators are often adapted, but some equipment or rooms are not, causing unpleasant situations that need to be dealt with urgently.

How to better adapt your buildings for PRM

While access to the outside of the building is legal and compliant, the inside is a different story. Rarely is everything ready for a Person with Reduced Mobility (adapted chair, height-adjustable desk, sufficient door width...). More commonly, some equipment is present, but poorly distributed or too few in number for several PRMs to benefit. However, the main difficulty remains the total absence of equipment adapted for people with reduced mobility.

Whatever the size or nature of your organization, there's no such thing as a fatality: every company can adapt its premises, access to them and their meeting or work rooms for PRMs. Here are a few essential recommendations to make a real improvement to your spaces and optimize the quality of life and work for your visitors or employees with disabilities:

• Adapted doors and means of access to floors (elevators, staircases, etc.) to enable PRMs to move around your premises with ease.
• Greater accessibility to your washrooms for the personal comfort of PRMs on site.
• Ergonomic office furniture for all PRMs.

These are just a few of the ways in which you can help your employees or visitors with reduced mobility in their day-to-day work, something which is still all too rare in the world of work in general.

Managing your PRM visitors

Even when well prepared, your premises may sometimes require the presence of staff to help welcome visitors in PRM situations, when you rarely have an employee available and dedicated exclusively to this task. This is why your reception and visitor management software needs to take this particularity into account, in order to receive your guests in the best possible way. With Hamilton Visitor, several statuses can be indicated when pre-registering or registering a visit:

• The VIP, to differentiate and prioritize certain important visitors from others who may be less urgent (4).
• The right to access the site's wifi code for a maintenance technician, a partner taking part in a face-to-face meeting, or in other practical cases.
• PMR, to indicate to receptionists that the visitor must be accompanied, and that the appropriate equipment must be brought out if there isn't enough of it on the premises.

To welcome visitors properly, it's essential to prepare for their visit. This requires your staff to clearly indicate the particularities of each visit, depending on the visitor. Because if the reception team is well informed, it will be able to welcome them in the best possible way.

The need for a complete welcome for your visitors

The entrance to your building is the first place in your company that your visitors will see. If it's not adapted for PRM visitors, their experience may not get off to a good start. What's more, if the access is not equipped, what will happen to the interior of your premises? So, in addition to complying with regulations in this field, you need to adapt your building access and interior spaces to give your company a good image.

These decisions may prove costly, but they are long-term actions and, above all, a true mark of respect and inclusiveness for your company. What's more, if your budget doesn't allow for a complete transformation of your facilities for your PRM employees or visitors, a few targeted investments (equipping certain rooms, adding means of access to floors, etc.) can be a good start, which you'll need to optimize with your reception team.

Hamilton Visitor can support your hostesses in this important task by providing, in addition to pre-registration, check-in or ID document scanning functionalities, an option associated with each visitor indicating that they are a PRM and that they need to adapt their welcome to ensure that the visit goes as smoothly as possible.

In short, your visitor reception solution needs to be intelligent and complete, so that the hostess team has all the tools it needs to provide a suitable welcome, whether for PRMs or other specific requirements.

Conclusion

It's worth remembering that, while access to buildings for visitors in PRM situations is a legal obligation, adapted interior fittings should never be seen as optional. Equipping your premises with tools that facilitate the movement and work of PRMs, while preparing to welcome them, is essential. Solutions such as Visitor meet this challenge: they support your teams in managing the flow of visitors, and enable each visit to be annotated according to categories (VIP, PRM, etc.), so as to optimize organization and reception. Modernizing your reception system means both digitizing it and adapting it to receive all your staff and visitors. In short, modernizing your reception system means guaranteeing everyone (visitors and employees alike) a smooth, inclusive experience that respects everyone's needs.