Don’t Forget to Wear and Swipe Your UCSF ID Badge Daily!


By Robert Hood on November 16, 2021

UCSF Employee ID Badge
Marco Sanchez, UCSF Documents & Media

Whether you are just now returning to work or study on-site at UC San Francisco or have been here throughout the pandemic, it’s important to wear your UCSF ID badge prominently above the waist and to swipe your badge at least once a day.

Prominently displaying your ID badge is a good safety practice and has always been policy for employees and students in UCSF Health facilities. A newly released Key/Badge Policy extends this requirement to those in campus facilities.

This new policy also documents the requirement to scan your ID badge at least once a day. One reason for requiring a daily swipe is to capture a daily census estimate. While a daily swipe doesn’t result in a perfect census count - since people move about and leave at the end of the day - having a snapshot census is better than the alternative of having little or no data.

Employees and learners who tap their badge into a UCSF building as required, but don’t complete the mandatory daily health screener, will be sent an email notification for non-compliance with the screener policy. Managers of employees will be copied on the email notification.

“There are many badge reader locations, including at each building’s main entry door. But readers are also conveniently located at elevators, stairwells, hallways, and several new readers have been installed at security and reception desks,” commented UCSF’s Access Control & Security Systems Manager, Gregg Sprowl.

This policy to swipe daily does not apply to locations without a badge reader, usually off campus locations. More badge readers are being added each month at leased locations based on the volume of people at these locations.

Contractors with issued ID badges are also required comply with ID badge policies.

As part of a massive, four-year project, UCSF will eventually be replacing badge readers at all campus sites, including UCSF Health. This new badge-reader technology comes with enhanced security features, which the university welcomes. “We have about 4,000 card readers to replace around the enterprise, so this is a large-scale undertaking,” added Sprowl.


Eventually, all UCSF badge holders will need to replace their badges with new ones.

“In 2022, we’ll be announcing additional policies and information about how to obtain new ID badges,” said Assistant Vice Chancellor of Campus Facilities, Jon Giacomi. Campus Life Services will work with the UCSF community to replace old employee ID badges with new badges. “There will be no cost to employees and your badge access will remain the same.”