From Wall Street to Main Street, employee-based crimes cost workplaces upwards of $50 billion a year according to estimates. While your security team is looking for a masked bandit in a striped t-shirt, employees or even poor business practices could be leading to problems in your warehouse.
You need to ensure your security guard qualifications meet the needs of your business and your workspace.
Here are five reasons why you need to properly vet your security staff for a warehouse or distribution center.
1. Customers Rely On Inventory
If you haven’t properly vetted your security guards, you probably haven’t imbued them with the knowledge that they need about the place they’re working. While they likely have some general idea of what the site looks like and what threats to look for, the products and services they protect determine their method.
When you’re looking to hire security guards, you need to inform them everything you can about what it is they’re protecting. Whether they’re protecting expensive products or inexpensive products, they need to have the same attitude. They need to treat every threat as serious and every product as if it were a rare gem.
Your customers and end users rely on your inventory to be accurate and dependable. When you let inventory slip through your fingers at all, you let down the people who need your products to support their stores or fulfill their lives.
Vet your team about what to look for in inventory management. While most of your threats will come from outside, but they should know how to find suspicious behavior from employees and coworkers. If it seems like an employee is a place they shouldn’t be, they should be able to intervene without impeding the work of the employee if they’re in the right place.
2. A Threat Isn’t Always A Person
You need to vet your security guards to look beyond the threats they might see in the faces of outsiders. Not every threat they deal with will be a person walking into the facility or on to the site of the warehouse.
There could be threats to your facility that come on four legs or more. If there are critters that are getting into your warehouse or distribution center, they can wreak havoc on your site quickly. Where you see one rat, you often see more and your staff needs to know how to act quickly.
Alternately, mother nature could send trouble your way and it could be on your security staff’s shoulders to fix things. If there’s a big storm coming or a sudden flash flood, they need to have access to sandbags and other tools to keep out the water. If there’s an earthquake, make sure they know how to secure any staff on site and stay safe on their own.
While your security staff might be trained to look for a masked bandit, trouble could arrive in a myriad of ways.
3. Communication Is Key
While you’re vetting your security staff, you should check out how good they are in conversation and in communicating with you. Pay attention to how they communicate their ideas and how clear it is to you what kind of person they are.
Are they the type to see a problem and think “someone else will take care of this”? Or are they a self-starter who will see a problem arise and spring into action with a plan in mind? Are they a strong team player who knows how to band together in times of crisis?
Someone who sees trouble needs to communicate what they see, what they think needs to be done, and what they need from others. These three things are the fundamental backbone of ensuring that you handle an incident.
If your security staff doesn’t have the tools to communicate, including walkie-talkies, text devices, and a special chat channel, they won’t be able to act.
4. They Need To Be Confident Enough To Act
When it comes time to take action on something, you need your staff to have what it takes to act. If you’re dealing with a security guard who doesn’t feel confident, threats can turn into crises in mere seconds.
Your staff not only needs to be assured that their authority to make decisions matters but also that you’ll back up their calls. If someone doesn’t think they’re going to be supported in their decision making, they’ll often fail to act.
Most people would rather not take action than to be chided for their choices later on. Let your staff know that you have their back and they’ll be there when you need them to be.
5. They Need To Treat Each Other Respectfully
One of the biggest problems that arise in a work environment is interpersonal problems. When people don’t treat each other respectfully, they’ll neglect tasks out of spite or fail to communicate important information.
Part of your vetting process needs to be to introduce everyone to one another. They need to value each other’s work and to know that they’re there to support not only the site but also the staff. If workers on the site need something, they should feel responsible for lending a hand.
When your security staff treats one another with respect, you can rest assured that your site will be secured and you’ll be able to put tasks on their shoulders.
Security Guard Qualifications Go Beyond Resumes
If you’re just looking at resumes for your security guard qualifications, you need to look at the other potential skills and talents your staff might have. If your security guards aren’t qualified to handle every kind of hurdle that might come their way, you need to train them properly.
If you haven’t trained your staff on the technology you use at your facility, check out our guide to properly vet them.