Contact tracing could become a regular part of office life. Here’s how it will work

As more workers return to the office, companies are considering ways to track their employees to help prevent the spread of coronavirus among their workforce. “Employers are trying to understand how they reopen, and it’s going to vary by different companies,” said Todd Lohr, principal, digital enablement leader at KPMG. “Companies can leverage on managed devices, or even with other third-party applications, can get that GPS data to be able to say that was in the office, because this is where we captured that data and here’s all the other employees who were in the office that day,” said Lohr. “The phones need the user to download an application and specifically allow it to beacon,” said Tanuj Mohan, Enlighted’s founder and chief technology officer. “Not only just gathering it, but it’s going to be gathered, it’s going to be stored, it’s going to be manipulated, it’s going to be analyzed.” Companies need to find the right balance between creating a safe workspaceand using whatever tools are available to them and making sure they are complying with the laws and respecting their employees’ privacy,” said Jena Valdetero, a partner at law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, who also co-leads the firm’s Data Privacy and Security Team.