Why the right visitor management system matters more than ever 

The way we work – and where we work – has changed dramatically. Hybrid work, shared workspaces and changing employee habits have brought greater flexibility to the workplace, but they’ve also brought new levels of complexity. 

There’s now so many people moving in and out of buildings, and for facilities and workplace managers, this raises a surprisingly difficult question: 

Who’s actually in the building? 

In today’s flexible working environments, it’s not easy to answer. Without that clarity, workplace teams risk more than just underused meeting rooms or empty desks, but also compliance and safety. This is where smart visitor management systems come in. 

From unpredictability to inefficiency

Flexible working models are helping organisations cut costs, attract talent and give employees more control over how they work. But they also introduce a new level of day-to-day unpredictability. At any given moment, it’s hard to know how many people are in the building, where they’re sitting or whether teams are in the office together. This often results in: 

For example, when an evacuation is needed, knowing who’s in the building and where they are is a compliance and safety requirement. Yet traditional methods like manual sign-ins, isolated access systems or siloed digital tools rarely offer the real-time visibility needed. 

The cost of outdated systems

Paper logs, swipe cards and standalone booking tools are often still used, but they don’t reflect actual occupancy and often create fragmented data that’s hard to act on. Worse, many of these methods undermine trust. Some organisations are using swipe data to enforce return-to-office mandates, a tactic that can feel more like surveillance than support, leading to trends such as ‘coffee badging’.  

This visibility gap grows wider in shared spaces or multi-tenanted buildings, where employees, contractors and visitors move in and out, often without any central oversight. Moreover, if landlords manage access control systems, workplace teams can’t always access the data. 

The importance of visitor management is growing with regulations like the UK’s Building Safety Act 2022, which mandates information about a building’s design, usage and maintenance, including who’s using the space and when. This includes everyone from guests to employees. Without integrated systems that provide accurate, real-time data, compliance becomes nearly impossible, and the duty of care is put at risk. 

It’s, therefore, no longer enough to rely on outdated systems. 

The benefits of a modern visitor management system

The rigA robust visitor management solution doesn’t just track who walks through the door, it creates confidence across the board. It helps teams understand occupancy trends, meet compliance with health and safety regulations, and enables swift responses in emergencies. 

More importantly, it supports safety without feeling intrusive. The best visitor management solutions focus on insights, not oversight. It’s about giving facilities teams the data they need to make smarter decisions, without compromising employee privacy. 

These platforms allow teams to: 

In multi-tenant environments, technology now needs to be intelligent enough to provide oversight without oversharing data. Platforms like Matrix Booking help make sure only the right teams see the right information, adhering to security and privacy protocols. Whether guests sign in via kiosk, QR code or passcode, the process is quick, modern, GDPR-compliant and can be designed for shared or unmanned buildings. 

Better data, smarter decisions

Occupancy and space utilisation tools are now a priority, with 25% of organisations planning first-time adoption to modernise and transform workplace strategies to improve building efficiency. But the most effective strategies don’t rely on isolated point solutions. They integrate platforms across booking, access and visitor tracking. 

Take EDF’s training campus, for example, which consolidated every aspect of the visitor journey into a single platform. The campus now delivers a fully connected, seamless experience for its visitors through a bespoke, user-focused and secure solution. 

And as organisations continue to adopt intelligent workplace systems, data quality becomes the foundation for everything. Anonymous occupancy and environmental sensors play a vital part in this. They can detect whether desks or rooms are actually being used, giving a much clearer view than a booking system alone. When combined with visitor management system data and access logs, it creates a far more accurate picture of how the space is really being used and who is in the building, without being intrusive. 

Better data, smarter decisions

Matrix Booking’s configurable, user-friendly platform makes sure every person – whether employee or guest – is accounted for. By bringing together resource booking, visitor management and occupancy analytics into one unified solution, facilities and workplace managers can move from guesswork to confident decision-making. Seamlessly integrated with access control, the platform makes sure only valid bookings are permitted, giving every person a frictionless experience.  

Because managing the modern workplace isn’t about keeping tabs, it’s about keeping people safe. To learn more about the importance of visitor management, get in touch.