With the coming government announcement predicted to allow Schools to reopen on March 8th, returning staff will still be required to maintain social distancing as they try to perform the tasks their role requires, potentially causing communication issues and affecting efficiency levels.
This ‘new normal’ may continue for many months after the lockdown ends and businesses will need to find innovative ways of maintaining clear communications between colleagues while keeping a safe distance apart.
Whether you work in a small or large school, two-way radios can provide instant communication between individuals and teams across your whole facility. Two-way radios can also assist in making workers more efficient through automated dispatching via work tickets and location-based tracking systems.
Licensed or Licence-Free Radio
Your choice of licence-free or licensed radios will depend on the functionality your team requires and the area of coverage.
For smaller schools, you may be able to use licence-free radios. Licence-free radios use 16 frequencies reserved for radio-to-radio communications (PMR446) but these channels can become congested in busy areas such as town centres and shopping centres where multiple businesses may be trying to use two-way radio as well.
In these circumstances, or for larger facilities or multi-site operations, you will need to upgrade to a licensed system. Licensed systems provide dedicated channels for your operation which can start from one-channel in a small geographical area up to multiple channels spanning an entire country.
Two-way radios are ideal for educational facilities
Staff can monitor the number of students in the canteen or playground and ask colleagues to allow another group of students into the area. Teachers can also co-ordinate staggered lesson finishes to ensure that all students aren’t travelling around the site at the same time.
A large campus site can replace its daily in-person briefings for teams and for managers with radios. This ensures that allemployees maintain social distancing while remaining informed.
By installing radio infrastructure to provide coverage across the whole site, you can also implement data services for work ticketing and employee locations, allowing maintenance employees to stay in the field rather than returning to a dispatcher or maintenance office to receive new work orders.
