Keeping Thousands of Employees Safe - and Operations Running - Through the COVID-19 Pandemic
A workforce health intelligence system that turned a fragmented crisis response into a calm, structured, mission-critical operation.
Built during the early COVID-19 era for large multi-shift manufacturers, this platform unified daily employee screening, AI-prioritized triage, and a coordinated medical response into a single operational fabric - protecting people without stopping production.
Avant nous
When the world stopped, our client couldn't. They ran multi-shift production lines staffed by thousands of people who couldn't work from home. A single undetected case could shut down a building, a shift, or an entire site. Their existing process - paper questionnaires, supervisor judgment calls, manual escalation - was already breaking under the weight of a 24/7 crisis.
Ce que nous avons construit
We designed and shipped a workforce health intelligence platform that screened every employee before every shift via SMS, used an AI triage layer to prioritize the most urgent cases, escalated suspicious results to a medical team in real time, and automatically gated workplace access until cleared. Built across Android, iOS, web and an HR command center.
Quatre mois plus tard
Production stayed online through the most volatile months of the pandemic. Suspicious cases reached the medical team within minutes instead of hours. Manual screening overhead dropped to nearly zero. Quarantine, retesting and re-entry were tracked end-to-end without spreadsheets or supervisor judgment.
Operational continuity in a moment that allowed no margin for error
Our client operated at industrial scale - multi-floor facilities, two 12-hour or three 8-hour rotations, thousands of employees moving through shared spaces every day. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, every one of those movements became a potential vector. The cost of a single oversight was no longer measured in lost hours; it was measured in the health of entire teams and the survival of entire production lines.
Why the existing playbook collapsed in under a week
Before our intervention, screening was a manual ritual: paper forms at the gate, supervisor judgment, ad-hoc WhatsApp groups, and a fragile chain of escalation that depended entirely on people remembering to call the right person. It worked when nothing was wrong. It collapsed the moment volume rose, fatigue set in, or a single shift handover went sideways. The client needed something that didn't depend on heroics.
Intelligent prioritization, before AI was the headline
We layered an AI triage model over the screening responses to surface urgency. It didn't replace the medical team - it ensured the most fragile cases reached them first, on a day where every minute of delay had a real cost. This wasn't a chatbot. It was a quiet, decisive prioritization layer running in the background of every shift.
A single fabric connecting employees, HR, and the medical team
We designed a closed-loop platform that treated employee health as an operational signal - something to be measured, prioritized, and acted on in real time, not at the end of a shift. Every person, every device, every workflow lived in one system, with strict roles and elegant handoffs between them.
The real problem wasn't medical. It was operational. They needed a system that protected people *and* allowed work to continue.
A daily, mission-critical loop
Pre-shift screening dispatch
Every employee received an SMS link before their shift. Inside, twenty carefully designed questions surfaced symptoms, exposures, and risk markers.
Hard-gated completion
Screening was tied to attendance and shift logic. Failure to complete triggered escalations because the workplace genuinely depended on it.
AI-prioritized triage
Submitted answers were scored by an internal triage model that flagged urgency long before AI was a consumer headline. The most concerning cases jumped the queue automatically.
Real-time medical handoff
The medical team reviewed flagged cases inside a focused dashboard, contacted the employee directly, and decided on testing or escalation in minutes.
Access control & quarantine
Anyone awaiting results was instantly blocked from facility access. Confirmed cases entered quarantine workflows. Negative results moved to observation. The system tracked the clock automatically.
Cleared, restored, re-screened
When the quarantine window closed, access was restored and the daily loop resumed - without a single human approval being forgotten.
A different surface for every person in the chain
Employees got an SMS-first experience optimized for two-minute completion on any phone. Operators saw a calm shift dashboard. The HR team got an alert center built for triage, not browsing. The medical team got a focused workspace with patient context, history, and decision tools. Every screen was designed for the moment of stress, not the moment of demo.
One system. Five surfaces. Zero friction.
For staff with company-issued devices
For the broad employee base
For HR, supervisors, and medical staff
For operations leadership and audit
For zero-friction daily screening
“It gave us something every operations team during the pandemic was desperately looking for: clarity. We could see every shift, every employee, every flagged case - without ever raising our voice.
More than a product - a quiet act of stewardship
Every line of this system was written under the weight of a real, ongoing crisis. We weren't optimizing a funnel. We were helping a company keep thousands of people safe while keeping critical work alive. That responsibility shaped every decision: what to automate, what to escalate, what to leave in human hands.
Calm interfaces for high-stakes moments
We resisted every temptation to dramatize the experience. The most demanding screens - the medical triage view, the access control gate, the quarantine clock - were the calmest. Color, motion, and density were used surgically. The product existed to lower cognitive load on the people running into the fire, not to display its own intelligence.
Aperçu de l'interface
Surfaces réelles du système, conçues en code. Pas des captures d'écran, pas d'images statiques.
Twenty quiet questions, two minutes, before every shift
Each employee receives an SMS link before their shift. The flow is short, calm, and impossible to skip without triggering an operational escalation.
SMS-first
Two-minute completion on any phone, no install, no friction.
Hard-gated
Failure to complete escalates through HR before the gate.
Immediate flagging
A single concerning answer surfaces to medical in under five minutes.
Calm tone
Designed to lower anxiety, not raise it. Built for tired people in dim light.
A focused workspace for the people running into the fire
A focused workspace for the medical team
Intelligent triage, before AI was the headline
From flagged to cleared, with no paper between
- Access automatically blocked while flagged
- Medical follow-up within 5 minutes
- Quarantine clock auto-tracked
- Access auto-restored when criteria met
What changed inside the operation
- 100% pre-shift screening coverage across thousands of employees, daily
- Suspicious cases reached the medical team in under five minutes
- 95%+ reduction in manual screening overhead at the gate
- Zero shift cancellations attributable to undetected cases on screened days
- Continuous, audited operations across multiple facilities and shifts
A platform built in a moment, designed to outlast it
The pandemic faded. The product didn't. The same architecture has since been repurposed for ongoing workforce health programs, return-to-work protocols, and pre-shift wellness checks. The lesson is the same now as it was then: when the cost of being wrong is human, the system has to be calm, intelligent, and ruthlessly reliable.
Six phases, démos hebdomadaires
Découverte
Atelier de cadrage avec les parties prenantes clés.
Architecture
Cadrage écrit, prix fixe, signature.
Sprint 1
Premier module fonctionnel, démo vendredi.
Sprints 2-4
Modules métier, intégrations, tests sur données réelles.
Pilote
Une équipe en production, commentaires intégrés.
Lancement
Mise en production, formation, support continu.
“Pre-shift screening coverage : 100%. Le système s'est rentabilisé en moins d'un an.
Plus dans cette industrie
Une histoire similaire à raconter ?
Si ce que vous avez lu vous parle, parlons-en. Réponse en 48 heures.
Réserver un appel