Employees are increasingly worrying about their security in the workplace.
Many women who work shifts feel scared leaving work late at night, in the professional sector, a growing number of women are anxious about visiting new clients.
Due to this new climate of fear and anxiety Darren Hyde, MD, VIP Security Services gives us his top tips to ensuring colleagues are protected.
- Engage with your staff and ask them about any security fears. Make sure they are able to report any potential threats or hazards and ensure their concerns are dealt with swiftly.
- Create a risk assessment plan to pinpoint potential hazards for all employees; once these risks are known, create an action plan to address any issues.
- Develop on and off-site policies to ensure a team manager knows where staff are. Ensure all staff members are offered a company mobile so that they can make contact if necessary. Depending on the meeting ensure colleagues do not travel or attend meetings on their own.
- Make sure your premises appear welcoming to staff and kept secure from intruders. All boundaries, such as fencing and gates should be kept in good working order and all buildings well-maintained.
- Out of hours, especially during the winter months, ensure your premises have adequate lighting to make sure staff feel safe. Effective lighting in all external areas, especially carparks is vital at keeping intruders off-site and will help employees feel safe when they’re returning to their vehicles in the dark.
- There’s also nothing like human contact for reassurance! Employ security personnel at the front of your building; this really helps to keep staff feeling secure and minimises risk of intrusion.
- Consider outsourcing your keyholding responsibilities. To safeguard your employees, retain a service-provider who can open-up and lock-up your premises as and when required. An outsourced provider is ideal when a burglar alarm goes off in the middle of the night and their service takes a huge burden off the shoulders of designated employees.
- Ensure your CCTV and alarm system are in good working order. To support your staff employ an external contractor to react to any alarm calls out of hours, this will take a huge weight off of staff member’s minds, and make them feel a lot more positive about the workplace.
- Workplace harassment can be a major issue in some organisations. Work closely with your HR team to iron-out any issues. Here cultural shift strategies can be put in place, or if the problem is more severe, new anti-bullying policies may need to be enforced.
- The online world has also become a major threat from ransom and cyber-attacks. Make sure you work closely with your IT department to ensure your organisation is kept safe, if problems do arise a contingency plan will need to be created across all departmental levels within your company.
To find out more about VIP Security Services, please visit www.vipsecurityservices.co.uk.
