When choosing a provider of any type of contracted employees, one of the most important factors to consider is how the other company’s employees will interact with your own. This is doubly true when the contractors are in charge of protecting your livelihood.
In many cases a security officer is the first individual to be seen and greet incoming personnel, including employees, and that interaction can set the tone for their workday. In many cases they have continuing interaction as work duties bring them together. Every employee must be given enough access to do their job, and often their roles, and thus their level of clearance can change. A security officer must be able to enforce company policy as directed without affecting morale. While security personnel should be focused on outside threats, occasionally they may need to be involved with local employees, for example being present at a termination to prevent an outburst or theft by the dismissed individual. However, knowing that a security officer has these responsibilities can sometimes worry employees that the officer is a hostile authority figure. This is not true; unless one of your employees is committing crimes or stealing from you, security and their clients are a team helping each other towards a common goal. That all parties have an understanding of this is integral to a productive working environment. Achieving this understanding takes a clear security plan, professional security officers, and most essentially, strong support and a hands-on approach by local management.
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Whether you are the one designing the security plan and writing its procedures, or one of the security personnel responsible for implementing it and maintaining the areas integrity, your main focus should always be performing the tasks that provide the best deterrence and defense against the threats that are truly most likely to disrupt the location being protected.
It’s all too easy to spend so much time focusing on the worst-case scenario that more likely threats are overlooked and vulnerabilities are left open. Sometimes it is possible to be too careful – if super heavy security measures are implemented in order to counter a threat that does not exist, they will have accomplished nothing beyond inconveniencing honest visitors for no gain. However if the threat is real, then not properly preparing for it could be disastrous. Many security principles are universal – the mere act of displaying that some form of effective protection will deter the vast majority of criminals away in favor of targets that do not seem to be looked after by their owner. In many cases this is all that is needed to ensure complete security. Sometimes it is not. This could be due to the location having something of enough value to be worth attempting to breach security, or environmental factors such as building design and the local crime rate. Finding exactly what makes you vulnerable can be difficult – many factors like lighting levels and even the layout of pathways can have a huge influence on how an intruder will act. Therefore it is always advisable to consult a security professional to determine the best way to defend your property. A well-designed security operation eliminates any easy approach for an incursion and finds a way to neutralize or minimize any advantage an intruder might be able to find. This cannot be accomplished without everything that may be an influence being accounted for; from nearby traffic patterns to how the building directs the flow of pedestrians. Of course, most important is the operating procedure of security personnel, and how they utilize the tools at their disposal.
A camera is one of the most valuable and proven tools in the security field. But its effectiveness by itself is severely limited. Even if an intruder passes through its sight, the video feed must be actively monitored in order to know that action needs to be taken. But staying focused while looking at video monitors for an extended length of time is not humanly possible; the vast majority of people have the ability to remain consistently attentive enough to notice an out of place threat for only 30 minutes of monitoring a repetitive image before losing focus. In addition, even if images of the intruder are recorded, they will be of little to no value if the intruder has taken steps to hide his identity, and the damage will have been done. This is one example of how considerations must be made to merge all security measures into a unified plan, with all elements being coordinated to take maximum advantage of their security benefits while working together to overcome their weaknesses. Though it has shortcomings on its own, there are many options like multiple monitoring officers, or regular rounds in the threatened areas between periods of studying video feeds that make up for them. |
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December 2023
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