Healthcare Employee Rebadges and the Top 3 Most Common Pain Points Caused by In-Person Photo Capture

Employee rebadge projects are complex under any circumstances, but in healthcare, they can become an operational grind.

Nearly every healthcare organization we’ve spoken with shares the same story: employee rebadging begins with optimism, but stalls under the weight of manual processes, in-person bottlenecks, and inconsistent results across campuses – all caused by one part of the process: in-person photo capture.

Through conversations with health systems across the country, a clear pattern emerges. The same issues repeat themselves whether a hospital is rebadging 5,000 people or 50,000. These issues create friction and can even lead to a high rate of project failure in many hospitals.

Below are the three major categories (or buckets) of pain points that make in-person photo capture one of the most challenging aspects of a healthcare rebadge.

Bucket 1: The Efficiency Pain Point

A manual, in-person photo capture workflow is almost universally inefficient. In-person photo capture demands coordination across departments, schedules, and campuses; it’s an impossible balancing act in a 24/7 environment.

Healthcare systems consistently report the same obstacles:

1. Getting employees to show up for photos is a logistical nightmare.

Employees are asked to arrive on off-days or get pulled away from critical clinical responsibilities. For multi-campus organizations, staff have to travel to locations where they don’t typically work, and employees working night shifts or off-site at satellite clinics may struggle to access the photo stations. This leads to delays, no-shows, and inconsistent participation,

Additionally, compensation for these extra trips to the office can add up rapidly when you’re talking about tens of thousands of employees .

2. Inconsistent equipment creates inconsistent photos.

When a system spans multiple campuses, the inconsistencies are inevitable. One location uses a webcam, another uses a DSLR. Lighting varies. Cropping varies. The result is a collection of photos that all look like they came from entirely different organizations. Our discovery calls confirmed this challenge, with teams describing wildly variable image quality based on which location captured the photo.

Collecting ID photos in person makes achieving consistency at scale nearly impossible.

3. Manual processing is a time sink.

Once the photos are finally captured, administrators and security officers spend hours (or hundreds of hours) manually downloading, naming, cropping, and uploading photos into their access control systems. Even “email-based” workflows still require the administrator to correct non-compliant images and follow up multiple times. One health system shared that over 60% of emailed submissions were rejected on the first pass.

In an industry where minutes matter, in-person photo capture burns through time, money, and workforce capacity. It is neither efficient nor sustainable.

Bucket 2: The Experience Pain Point

Rebadging should feel like a refresh.

In-person photo capture delivers the opposite experience:

1. Employees endure travel, long lines, and rushed appointments.

Teams in our discovery calls described employees driving 1–1.5 hours to a specified campus, sometimes not even the one where they actually work,  just to take a photo. Traveling between facilities is inconvenient, and waiting in lines that snake down hallways creates friction and frustration. Plus, overnight and early-morning staff are often forced to come in during non-work hours—or administrators must work overtime to accommodate them.

2. “No retake” policies leave employees unhappy with their badge.

High-volume in-person workflows force staff to choose between quality and throughput. Some health systems have to enforce strict “one-and-done” policies simply to keep the process moving. Staff are ushered through, given a single shot, and sent on their way. When badges are finally distributed, and people don’t like their photos, complaints inevitably follow.

3. Admin burnout.

The experience isn’t much better for administrators. They’re forced to extend hours, cover overnight or early shifts, and staff photo stations for weeks on end. The pressure to move quickly while maintaining accuracy can lead to burnout across roles. 

Even well-run systems describe the experience as “archaic,” “a slog,” or “never-ending.”

Bucket 3: The Effort Overload Pain Point

Healthcare leaders repeatedly describe the photo capture piece of the rebadge as the most significant operational hurdle. The sheer volume of effort required from employees and directors for in-person photo capture gets overwhelming when multiplied across thousands of employees and multiple campuses. It becomes an “all hands on deck” effort that strains teams long before the new badges ever hit printers.

A single in-person photo requires a surprising number of steps.

In-person photo capture introduces a level of effort that simply does not scale.

A single photo requires:

• Scheduling

• Setup

• Employee coordination

• Photo capture

• Identity confirmation

• Manual data entry

• Manual file transfers

• Uploading into the access system

Multiply that by, 5,000 employees…10,000 employees…50,000 employees or more…and the system collapses under its own weight.

Small inefficiencies become huge obstacles when e

very step relies on someone being physically present and manually completing tasks that are “nearly impossible to do cleanly at scale.”

Many hospitals shared that rebadging is:

• A strain on already limited resources

• A constant stop-and-start process due to clinical demands

• A source of avoidable rework when photos are inconsistent

The burden is massive, and it falls squarely on the teams responsible for keeping the organization secure, compliant, and operational.

Rebadge Success Requires Rethinking Photo Capture

Healthcare organizations manage some of the most complex workforces in the world—multiple campuses, multiple shifts, constant movement, and critical responsibilities that can’t pause for administrative tasks. In-person photo capture was never designed to support rebadging at this scale, and the pain points clearly demonstrate this: inefficiency, employee frustration, and a heavy administrative burden.

The good news is that this part of the process can be modernized. Remote photo capture gives health systems the ability to collect consistent, compliant photos without forcing staff to travel, wait, or sacrifice valuable time. It eliminates manual processing, reduces retakes, and creates a centralized workflow that keeps large-scale rebadges moving smoothly.

Hospitals that have already modernized their photo collection process are completing rebadges faster, more efficiently, and with far fewer headaches.

Bring Consistency and Efficiency to Your Next Rebadge

If your health system is still relying on legacy technology and in-person photo capture for rebadges, now is the time to reconsider. A modern, remote photo capture workflow can drastically reduce administrative lift, improve employee experience, and bring consistency and control to even the largest rebadge projects.

Your next rebadge doesn’t have to be months of lines, chaos, and manual effort. 

There is a better way.

We’re here to help! We’d love to chat about how a remote photo capture workflow can help you conquer your next rebadge.