How to Train Your Employees on Essential Business Security

Employ­ee edu­ca­tion is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of busi­ness secu­ri­ty. If your employ­ees aren’t aware of the pro­to­cols keep­ing your busi­ness secure, it will only increase your risk of theft and bur­glary.

Even if you have a com­mer­cial secu­ri­ty sys­tem or secu­ri­ty cam­eras installed, employ­ees must under­stand how they work and how to oper­ate them, in addi­tion to oth­er secu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures. Oth­er­wise, one small mis­take could cre­ate a sig­nif­i­cant secu­ri­ty lapse.

While every busi­ness is unique, most employ­ee train­ing pro­grams should include fun­da­men­tal top­ics. Here are a few areas to cov­er in your train­ing.

Risk aware­ness & rea­sons for busi­ness secu­ri­ty

Employ­ees must know what’s at stake. Be clear about the rea­sons why your busi­ness secu­ri­ty must be tak­en seri­ous­ly. Please review the spe­cif­ic risks and explain how the train­ing is nec­es­sary for their safe­ty and the busi­ness’s over­all suc­cess.

When applic­a­ble, point out spe­cif­ic crim­i­nal activ­i­ty or vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties to your busi­ness. For exam­ple, a risk of theft from retail areas, intru­sion via unlocked rear doors and receiv­ing areas, etc.

Pro­to­cols for pre­ven­tion

Out­line the spe­cif­ic pro­ce­dures for elim­i­nat­ing those risks and pre­vent­ing crimes from occur­ring in the first place.

Using the exam­ples above, these pro­to­cols could include steps for pre­vent­ing blind spots on the retail floors, secur­ing rear entry points, han­dling cash, accept­ing deliv­er­ies, etc. For many busi­ness­es, these pro­ce­dures will be crit­i­cal for over­all secu­ri­ty, so spend as much time on them as nec­es­sary to ensure employ­ees under­stand them.

Active secu­ri­ty mon­i­tor­ing pro­ce­dures

Review the secu­ri­ty pro­to­cols that should be fol­lowed when guests, cus­tomers or oth­er indi­vid­u­als are at the busi­ness loca­tion. The goal of this train­ing is to edu­cate employ­ees on how to spot or pre­vent a crime from occur­ring. Depend­ing on the nature of your busi­ness, these pro­to­cols may per­tain to the fol­low­ing:

• Watch­ing the sales floor in retail areas
• Point-of-sale/­trans­ac­tion mon­i­tor­ing
• Vis­i­tor check-in process­es for recep­tion areas
• Pro­ce­dures for secu­ri­ty per­son­nel (such as mon­i­tor­ing secu­ri­ty cam­eras, perime­ter access pro­to­cols, etc.)

Secu­ri­ty sys­tem oper­a­tion

If employ­ees are han­dling the busi­ness’s secu­ri­ty sys­tem, cam­eras or oth­er secu­ri­ty tools, train them to oper­ate the sys­tems prop­er­ly.

Even if employ­ees do not direct­ly oper­ate these sys­tems, they should know their exis­tence and under­stand what they do. This will fur­ther help employ­ees under­stand the var­i­ous secu­ri­ty lay­ers and their roles. Addi­tion­al­ly, the mere knowl­edge of these sys­tems can help pre­vent inter­nal theft.

Safe­ty & response to secu­ri­ty inci­dents

Remem­ber that your employ­ees are your most valu­able asset. As such, your secu­ri­ty poli­cies should be designed to ensure their safe­ty – espe­cial­ly dur­ing active inci­dents.

Based on var­i­ous sce­nar­ios, employ­ees should know exact­ly what to do if a crime occurs.

If their safe­ty is at risk, how should they pro­tect them­selves? What do they do in a rob­bery? How do they report the inci­dent?

This must be clear­ly explained to avoid con­fu­sion if an inci­dent occurs.

Request a com­mer­cial secu­ri­ty audit.

A com­pre­hen­sive busi­ness secu­ri­ty audit can help to inform your train­ing by iden­ti­fy­ing your busi­ness’s unique vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and secu­ri­ty require­ments. Request a no-oblig­a­tion secu­ri­ty audit from PROTECTION PLUS and one of our pro­fes­sion­al secu­ri­ty con­sul­tants will con­duct an exten­sive site inspec­tion.