May 24, 2019
As a business, you take every possible precaution to keep your premises secure. Towards the end of the day, you think about getting home and winding down. You believe everything back at the office will be safe and secure upon your return the following day.
Unfortunately; every business no matter what size may be is at risk out of hours. It could be an intruder, fire or something less serious.
Do you allow any of your staff members to respond to such activations out of hours?
This may look like a simple security solution but may have serious consequences.
Alarm Activation response requires training, knowledge, and expertise. There are various issues that you, may need to think about before exposing your staff to potentially high-risk situations.
- Are intruders still on the premises?
- What level of training and expertise does your staff have while exposed to an alarm response callout?
- Are your staff members aware of the risks whilst entering, for example, an oxygen-starved environment?
As an employer, you always want to minimise all threats and risks associated with running your business. A professional alarm response service will cover all points of concern listed below.
Duty of Care
Exposing untrained staff to a threatening situation can be deemed negligent by the employer. Let’s take a scenario where a staff member is on the way to attend an intruder alarm activation in the early hours on a Sunday morning. On route, he is involved in a collision. The outcome being; no one responds to the alarm activation in time resulting in your premises being compromised.
More importantly, what duty of care have you shown your employee?
Health & Safety Concerns
In this modern day and age, health & safety of your staff is paramount. Have you made adequate provision in relation to training, your staff members to attend potentially threatening situations? You cannot put a price on the Health & Safety of your staff. What liabilities are you exposing your staff to?
Insurance Claims & Unnecessary Costs
Any situation that creates harm or includes stress to a staff member could lead to an insurance claim and unnecessary costs and might even end up in a cost-intensive court case.
Implications of Alcohol on Judgement
Having a staff member respond to alarm activation out of hours could have a serious effect on their decision-making ability. It is a fact that alcohol impairs judgment. Having a few drinks on a Saturday night and responding to Fire Alarm activation will lead to poor decision making on their part.
Loss of Productivity
Let’s take David’s story who is the General Manager of ‘Supreme Logistics’. He receives a call at 3 am and has to attend the alarm activation. Once he arrives at the premises, he fully inspects and discovers it to be a false alarm and goes home. An hour later he gets call activation and responds again.
He arrives to work at 9 am with having had a broken night’s sleep. It has a detrimental effect on his work performance. The question is was it worth having David’s sleep interfered on multiple alarms during the night?
A professional Alarm Response Service can protect your business and your staff from unnecessary risks, threats and costs and most importantly, the inconvenience. When it comes to responding to an activated alarm, reaction time and on ground knowledge is crucial.
- 5 Tips for Responding to Alarm Activations
- Top 10 Points That Criminals See As Your Weak Point
- Tips to reduce the risk of a break-in to your business