Chill Passion boosts employee attendance and confidence with Healthper’s Return to Work program on Microsoft Azure

Manual testing proves unsustainable

Chill Passion, founded in 2008 in Chicago, manufactures and distributes beverage-dispensing products that can be found in restaurants, bars, stadiums, and casinos throughout North America. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, it implemented a manual temperature-screening solution in its workplace. But with a cost of $375 per gate per day for the screening, administered through a third party, it was not financially sustainable. On top of that, the manual screening took at least 45 seconds and made employees uncomfortable.

Looking for alternatives, Chill Passion approached Healthper. Based in Hamden, Connecticut, Healthper offers turnkey well-being programs and challenges, as well as a platform and services to create customized programs and digital interventions. Healthper’s Return to Work program is tailored to employers' specific needs. Healthper provided Chill Passion with two temperature terminals, which security personnel installed on two of the four entry doors.

“As a small business, we needed an affordable solution to monitor daily employee temperature," said Ashish Passi, President of Chill Passion. "Return to Work by Healthper was set up quickly and worked smoothly. Quick temperature scans help in avoiding employee crowding at the entry door while saving us money over manual scans. Other features in the app also work well.”

Chill Passion employees received a notification to activate their Return to Work app accounts using iOS, Android, or desktop devices. The app notified employees to upload pictures of their masked and unmasked face. Employees were also asked to complete a COVID-19 health screening every day via the app before coming in for their work shift. Appropriate guidance was provided in the app instructions on what to do in case there was an exception identified in the temperature scan at the terminal. The instructions included how to download the denial-of-entry letter, if needed, from the app.

When a temperature exception occurred, the employee was notified to immediately check his or her email. The email included further instructions, like getting a COVID-19 test done at the nearest testing center. The employee was notified to quarantine at home and follow the recommended steps from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Instant email notification was also sent to the supervisor. Daily reports were provided to the supervisor regarding individuals who did not complete a health screening and who had a temperature scan exception.

Early success

A week after the program launched, there was a 19 percent increase in employee attendance. The temperature scanning was made more private by displaying an "Allowed" or "Needs attention" message on the terminal, and scanning took only two seconds, compared to the 45 seconds required for manual screening.

The daily assessment report provided clear oversight for offsite or onsite employees who reported exposure to COVID-19. The cost of temperature scanning was reduced to a fixed, one-time cost of $5,000 rather than the estimated manual screening cost of $136,000 per year. The integration of the temperature-screening terminal with the gate security system improved compliance and boosted employee confidence in the safety measures.

“Our employees had concerns returning to work due to COVID-19 escalations in our area,” Passi said. “We spoke to them and their safety was our priority. We implemented the Return to Work program by Healthper for our employees and visitors. Over the last two months, we have seen employee confidence built up, and now we are running our facility at full production capacity. The ease of use of the program, its implementation process, and support has been outstanding.”

Built with Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services

Azure Cognitive Services helps organizations build intelligent apps through its comprehensive AI services and cognitive APIs. Healthper used the Face API from Azure Cognitive Services to easily train the Return to Work AI model. Later, Healthper used the Face API to identify faces from the images captured using the face recognition terminal. It also enabled the creation of seamless notification to employees and to the facility administrator for employee identification.

The security of Azure infrastructure gave Chill Passion confidence and satisfied employees' desires for their data to be protected.

Atul Kumar, Chief Product Innovation Officer at Healthper, said, “We faced a challenge to adapt the rapidly changing customer needs due to the COVID-19 pandemic and keep security concerns a priority. Microsoft Azure provided not only a secured infrastructure, but the Face API’s cognitive capabilities helped us create a solution that was easily adopted by our client's employees. The efficacy of the Face API from the get-go gave us the confidence to be production-ready within record time for our artificial intelligence-powered solution.”

Return to Work increased employee attendance by 100 percent in four weeks, with no additional staff needed to administer screenings on entry. Chill Passion now has a faster, more cost-effective temperature-screening solution deployed on Azure infrastructure.