Visitor Policy for Corporate Visits

We are a manufacturer of direct contact food packaging. Our Food Defense Plan along with our Facility Access Control Plan and Visitor Policy requires that all visitors must sign in at the main office receptionist desk, complete a visitor agreement, and wear a visitor badge while on the premises. This would include members from our sister companies as well as corporate personnel. 

Our employees are trained to stop anyone that they do not recognize and are not wearing visitor badges. 

I am wondering if any of you have advice on how to handle the corporate members that do not feel they need to sign in or wear visitor badges.

Just explain that this is a requirement and push the pen and paper and tag in their face.  Be direct with a smile.  Sometimes they will back down with control.  Get your management on board.  Our last audit we got a NCR for having a contractor sign in and out at the foyer, but we did not visitor GMPs filled out for them.  This was done by our management by letting contractors in without following procedure.  I would hate for you to loose a point in an audit, but it can happen.  Good Luck!

You tell the corporate people that they are setting the example for everyone else - your employees see they don't or won't do it why should I. 

I did an inspection some years back and I arrived about 20 min early. So I sat in reception and watched as 5 people came in and walked right past the sign in book and entered the interior office area.

I then got up from sitting 20 min later, signed in, did my announcement and was shown into a conference room where those same 5 people from the parent company were sitting.

That didn't go over too well during the initial part of the audit. 

Your management team should try to understand the risk that is introduced by not having corporate members sign in. Usually, local staff don't recognize off-site corporate staff. They're strangers to them. So how are they supposed to know that someone who comes into the plant without following procedure isn't a total stranger? And if they ask this person, are they happy to simply hear "oh, I'm from corporate" despite seeing no visitor badge? It creates two bad habits: 

1. The local staff simply rely on (possibly made-up) answers to their questions regarding whether someone is following visitor policy

2. Other local staff may simply assume that someone they don't recognize walking around the plant is from corporate and not ask any questions at all.

Would your corporate/management team really want to promote a safety culture that would allow strangers to come on site and mess with their company? 

We've also posed this as a Safety issue. We need to have everyone signed in and out in order to know who is in the building in case of a fire or some other emergency where a headcount matters. If you don't know who's in the building you don't know to look for them if they aren't accounted for in a disaster. 

We have loosened up to some extent on the name badge if they have their company badge visible e.g., clipped to their waste. This identifies who they are as well as that they are a company employee even if they aren't from that specific facility.

MLissaB your timing is perfect. I just did a fire drill with evacuation and two out of three of the corporate officials that were here unannounced did not sign in. One failed to evacuate and we were able to use this as a reason that you mentioned for strict compliance with signing in on the log. Thank you. 

If our corporate people (I'm one of them) want to visit one of our sites, we have to sign in, no ifs or buts. If it's a site we regularly visit, we have to undergo a site induction and the level of the induction is based on is it office or manufacturing facility or both that you will be visiting. Our sign in systems use a tablet, with sign in software where you can choose employee or visitor, contractor etc, then enter your name or phone number, it checks if you're inducted, if not there is an induction on the tablet which you have to complete, the system issues you a pass (printed label with your picture), or in my case, I'm issued with  a pass, and that pass is electronic and you can only go where it allows you to. When you leave you sign out. I've seen systems where if you forget to sign out you get a test message to see if you are still on site or not, if not you can sign out via a link. Simply, no one can get onto our sites nowadays without signing in and meeting up with who they need to see.

As noted above, it's imperative that it doesn't matter who is visiting your site, corporate or not, if they are properly inducted, wear a pass, must be escorted around the site if not inducted. It's a safety issue, you have a site emergency, how do you know who's on site or not, what PPE do they need (if any),  it's a food defence issue, what are they doing on site, who are they with? It's a GFSI requirement - they are not being compliant by not following a defined visitor policy, and they are a site visitor, corporate or not. This really needs a big push to ensure compliance - there is too much risk to the site, the visitor and the company if they find it "too hard" to sign in.

I believe for Safety purposes they have to sign in if it isn't their regular building.  I am honestly on the fence about having them wear a visitor badge.  As I can see people making an argument either way.  They are a visitor in a sense that they aren't normal to the site, however, you are all one company and since they work for the company they are not technically a visitor in a sense.  I suppose it would all depend on how your policy is written.  One company I worked at with multiple sites, we had in our policy you had to sign in so if there was an emergency, you knew that person was there.  We did not have to wear any visitor badges as we were part of the company so it wasn't a requirement.  Never had an issue with it as staff generally knew who the corporate people were.

We had this same issue at my plant with some of the contractors we have been using for years. I had the front desk receptionist just blame it on me ;)  So she told them hey Abbi's doing weekly audits of our visitor sign in etc. and I have to make sure everything is in order and correct. It took a couple of weeks but now they don't have to be told, they come straight in, sign in, and grab a badge.