Quick, Automated Employee Screening With Clock In Questions

by Deepesh Banerji, 4 minutes read
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The ability to add our Wellness Check Questions prior to an employee beginning work is very helpful,” says Jarred Lokietz, VP of Innovation for the Goodman McDonald’s Group. “We can now ensure all our employees are healthy and really adds a level of security for our employees.”

In a world where a single sick employee can be the difference between your business remaining open or not, actively monitoring your employees’ health is more important than ever.

To protect your business and limit the risk of employees and staff being exposed to COVID-19 in your workplace, Deputy has introduced Clock In Questions. Now you can perform a quick, automated health check of every employee before they start their shift — and prevent clock in if the employee presents signs of illness.

For those more familiar with Deputy, Clock In Questions are an expansion of our existing custom timesheet fields feature, with the added ability to ask the questions ahead of clocking in.

With many businesses getting ready to open their doors again in the coming weeks, here’s how Clock In Questions can help businesses ensure a safe and smooth transition back to work.

Returning to work safely

The easing of COVID-19 restrictions will soon see large parts of our shift-based workforce returning to their pre-pandemic posts.

For many businesses, this means that across any given week, your employees may work alongside a number of different team members and interact with lots of different customers.

To keep everyone safe and protect your business, it will be critical to ensure that all employees are in good health and pose no known risk to other team members or customers.

Clock In Questions allows you to perform a quick pre-work health survey of every team member before they start their shift.


As these questions are completely customizable, they can be set up to capture any number of important health questions that may be important for your business — such as whether your employee has checked their temperature (and record what their temperature was), whether they’ve washed their hands, and even how they traveled to work.

For additional protection, if an employee answers “yes” to a question that indicates they could present a health risk, you can set an automatic block that will restrict the employee from clocking in. And the manager will receive an instant alert so they can immediately take action.

Make team wellbeing a priority

While ensuring your team is in good physical health is a critical focus, so too is ensuring their mental and emotional wellbeing throughout this incredibly difficult time.

As we ease back into our new normal, there is still a great deal of uncertainty and concern over how the next couple of months will play out. This can weigh especially heavily on the minds of employees who have found themselves moving from isolation to the front line of customer service.

Clock In Questions can be used to provide much-needed insight into how your team is fairing on a day to day basis and identify what might make them feel more comfortable about coming back to work.

Over time, capturing these sentiment scores can also be used to help build a bigger picture in your business about how employee morale can interact with employee turnover or customer service quality.

Protect your business with attestation reporting

While over the last few months you may have only been focused on addressing issues related COVID-19, the reality is that the need to stay compliant with changing workplace regulations has remained the same.

Clock In Questions can serve as an “attestation” capture for your business, meaning that you can use this feature to capture any agreements between the business and employees that are legally compliant.

For example, you might have an employee who arrives late for a shift. In some jurisdictions, regulations require that the employee confirms they did, in fact, arrive late due to their own fault. Otherwise, if the employee arrived late because of the manager’s request, that would indicate a late change of schedule and could incur a penalty. With the answer captured on the employee timesheet, future disputes can be easily resolved through a clear record of attestation in Deputy.

While we know that the road to recovery comes with unpredictability and will certainly not be without its challenges, we want to make sure that we’re helping businesses to navigate the new normal in every way we can.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how Deputy can help your business you can sign up for a free trial or get in touch with a member of our friendly team who will be happy to assist you. And if you want to learn more about how to set up your own Clock In Questions, check out this help article.