By David Portnowitz
Kids are going back to school, Fall fashions are cropping up in stores and magazines, and people everywhere are already looking longingly at the vacation photos they just took a few weeks ago. It’s the end of summer, and with it comes the traditional kickoff to getting back to work: Labor Day Weekend.
From a workers’ rights perspective, Labor Day symbolizes the rise of collective bargaining and the creation of critical workplace protections. But it’s also dedicated to the vast and varied social and economic achievements of American workers, all contributing to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country. Labor Day usually means a long weekend, barbecuing and soaking up the last days of summer for consumers. And on the flip side of that, Labor Day Weekend is one of the busiest of the year, especially for retail, public safety, and healthcare organizations.
Fortunately, an upgraded communications system can help meet the challenges presented by Labor Day activities as well as other busy holiday times to come in the last quarter of the year. Here are some ways to make your communications system a centerpiece for success:
Retail
Holiday weekends mean big sales for most retailers, and that means big shopping crowds and a strain on employee and technological resources. To help streamline the retail environment, a unified communications (UC) implementation can allow retailers to deploy on-floor tablets with a range of anywhere, anytime features so that departments can communicate about item availability, pricing, and so forth. These features include text messaging, voice communications and video. UC also supports staff tracking and scheduling, which can be a real challenge during a big holiday weekend. Seamless communication with multitasking employees as they move back and forth between departments is a management benefit; managers can use the UC suite to communicate with employees about scheduling and hours in a centralized fashion.
Public Safety
For the average citizen, Labor Day is a long weekend of fun; for first responders, it’s a moment to be on high alert. Holiday weekends are prime time for everything from drunk driving and boating to accidental shootings. And anywhere there are large crowds (think beaches, malls, lakes and other recreational places), there’s a potential for things to go horribly wrong. As a result, police and firefighters are trained to be ready for any situation, with expertise in active shooter awareness, mass casualty response, shelter operations, psychological first aid and emergency operations position training. The hope is that they won’t have to call on that training—but the need for readiness is there nonetheless. Fortunately, UC can greatly enhance their ability to handle emergency situations by offering centralized communications access with a seamless platform for team situational awareness and critical information like location data, man-down alerts and more.
Healthcare
Labor Day weekend tends to be a big one for healthcare too, as emergencies and accidents tend to spike around long weekends. UC can help nursing staff and doctors deliver better care because they can access critical information and personnel more quickly to collaborate with greater efficiency across teams and locations. Doctors, nurses and specialists can’t afford to miss calls or wait for someone to return their requests for critical patient information and status updates; with UC, they have real-time access to patient data and can share this information immediately across the most expedient communications method available to them.
UC also provides centralized, anytime, anywhere access to medical and drug databases, and can help coordinate back-office functions like scheduling appointments, billing, and other administrative details. The end result is more efficiency—a must during busy times—with better patient outcomes.
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