ID badge offices often have to deal with challenging situations, but few are more difficult than suddenly having to manage a very high volume of ID badge printing. Most organization are not printing badges 24/7, but at certain times throughout the year it sure does feel like it.
- Hospitals and medical groups notice an increase in badge printing when there is a significant increase of badged staff members. A perfect example would be the COVID-19 global pandemic. At the start of the pandemic, hospitals across the country required more staff members to help treat the increased number of patients.
- Schools and Universities print a high volume of badges at the beginning of the year during the add/drop window, when new students flood on to campus by the hundreds.
- Business and large corporations face this challenge when they hire a new group of employees, merge with an organization, or rebrand.
High volume printing isn’t always easy to manage, so here are 5 tips you can use the next time you have to print a high volume of ID badges.
- Clean your data.
• Ensure your HR files are up to date with ID numbers and preferred first names.
• If your badges require technology, they may need to be encoded. If they do require encoding, be sure to export your encoding data and blend with your HR files. - Export all your photos with uniformity. Using a unique item for your file name, such as an Employee ID number, can ensure that photos gets matched with the accurate line of data.
- Prepare a “Badge Guidelines” document through Branding or Executive Leadership to ensure that everyone in the organization is on board with badge design layouts, spacing, and placements of logos and data items.
- Compile all the technology information you can.
• What type of magnetic stripe/barcode/proximity card do you use?
• What piece of data is encoded in the magnetic stripe/barcode/proximity card? - Be prepared- Make sure your printer is fully functioning, stock up on supplies for the project like ribbon, laminate, retransfer file, card stock, cleaning kit, and badge accessories. If you order these products ahead of time you may be able to get a bulk discount depending on the size of your project.
Relax! We have your back. Rebadging and high volume printing is a tedious and time-consuming project. It can be overwhelming, but we have done this many time before. We will keep you on track and ensure nothing is missed!