We’ve all heard the old aphorism: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It’s thought that Benjamin Franklin coined the phrase in 1733 after learning about the City of Philadelphia’s fire prevention methods. Franklin understood that proactivity is the key to maximizing results and minimizing time and effort spent in so many areas of life. Whether for optimizing your health, ensuring your safety, or things like avoiding conflict, it’s better to take smalls steps to prevent problems before they occur, than to have to deal with the consequences of those problems later.
You likely already act this way with many of the choices you make! Going to the dentist to get your teeth cleaned regularly is a good example. But what about at work?
Real workplace safety is PROACTIVE
Let’s say you need a new piece of equipment for the office or factory. Before you buy it, you check its performance and safety ratings. You expect the installers to know and use the correct installation process. And you expect them to adhere to specific protocols to ensure the equipment will behave as expected and not create a hazard for your building or the people in it. Over the life of the equipment, you have it maintained regularly to prevent hazards and failures. And you teach your employees to use the equipment as designed so that it lasts a long time.
Taking a proactive approach to overall workplace safety is the same kind of smart choice. It makes good sense to identify hazards and address them before they cause or contribute to harm.
Mitigating risk through thoughtful planning can keep your workers and your facilities safer. The big question is, do you know what risks to look for – and to plan for?
The benefits of a physical security assessment
There’s a real gulf between thinking a building is secure and knowing it is. Want to plan effectively? Getting a real understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of your location is an essential first step.
Start with a formal security assessment.
Hire a professional security expert (like our team at SACS) to conduct a physical security assessment of your building or campus. The assessment will uncover any problems that need addressing as well as the opportunities you may have to improve security. While it may be daunting to imagine that your physical plant has vulnerabilities, the benefit of actually knowing is that you’ll have information with which to make realistic decisions for improvement.
A comprehensive physical security assessment will include a review of:
- Entrances and exits
Do your doors and windows all lock properly? Do you have specific protocols and procedures for admitting personnel and visitors to your building and grounds? Are your employees following them? - Outdoor spaces
Are your parking lots, garages, gates, fences, and outdoor seating areas secured and monitored? - Technology
- Are you using security cameras to keep an eye on the property? Is the entire campus visible using your cameras, or are there blind spots? Are you using the cameras to monitor access to the property?
- Do you have health emergency equipment like Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) and first aid kits installed in key locations? Have you trained your employees to use them?
- How old is your equipment? Is it under warranty? Is the software still supported? Does all your tech work together systematically? (Meaning, do all your technologies talk to each other effectively to support your security objectives?)
Your personnel’s essential role in workplace security
Even with the best equipment, the safety of your building and your personnel still comes down to whether your workforce is poised to support an effective security plan. A proper security assessment should also look at vulnerabilities beyond the space itself. So, how are you modeling and instilling co-responsibility for safety for your people?
You should consider ALL of your employees part of the team charged with keeping your space and your people secure. And it’s important that everyone understand what is expected of them as part of that team.
Are they all trained to respect safety rules (e.g, not propping open doors)? Are you adequately staffed to both use and maintain your security technologies? Have you trained those staff members to use that tech effectively? Have you trained them to swiftly and safely manage any breaches in access?
Real safety is interpersonal, too.
Building a positive workplace culture can go a long way to improving overall safety in the workplace. Creating emergency action plans and anti-harassment policies is one thing; teaching and modeling interpersonal accountability is another! Do your employees know how to respond effectively to interpersonal conflict? How many of them have been trained to handle health emergencies? To handle bullying and harassment? To handle active shooter situations?
Effecting real security means assuring you can keep your people alive and thriving in the work environment too. SACS Consulting understands the intricate relationship between workplace culture and workplace safety; ask us about our Human Resources services!
Do your executives need extra protection?
Do you have key personnel whose importance to the business, high net worth, or celebrity demands a higher level of personal security? Discuss the particulars with your hired expert as part of their comprehensive security analysis. Then consider putting a reputable close-protection service in place – at the workplace, at the executives’ homes, and on the road, if necessary. Often executives will wait until there’s a threat before they raise their level of fortification – and then only temporarily. Executive protection is a SACS specialty; we can address this unique need in a more permanent and effective way.
What happens next?
Once the comprehensive assessment is completed, you’ll have solid information with which to make changes, should gaps be found. You may need to upgrade or add to your equipment. You may need to develop new procedures and teach your employees how and why to follow them. You may need to train employees to assess and report threats, or to handle certain kinds of security breaches or other emergencies. You may decide to secure the homes of your executives as well.
And once you’ve deployed any necessary improvements, it’s a good idea to have your security reassessed every year, to make sure your workplace and your personnel stay safe.
What if you need outside help creating and maintaining security?
SACS Consulting & Investigative Services, Inc. is expert at evaluating physical locations to determine vulnerabilities and advising business owners on needed improvements. But we can also go way beyond these basics to help you protect your building and your people. From deploying our highly-trained personnel to handle your emergencies, events, threats, and close protection needs, to working with you to create the Human Resources policies and procedures you need to minimize risks and improve workplace culture, to training your employees in a wide variety of safety and HR issues, our team offers comprehensive, best-practices solutions to support your business’s safety and success. Our suite of services is unique in that no other company in the security industry provides the comprehensive adjunct services that so perfectly complement our clients’ security needs.
Ready for a professional security assessment for your business?
Call us at 330-255-1101 to speak with one of our security specialists today. Because an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.