Your business represents the concatenation of all your most valuable assets. And with a large percentage of businesses burgled or attacked (over half of all business fires are arson related) every year, knowing how to secure it is vital. Follow these five points to start thinking safe.
Assess the risk
A risk assessment will tell you what areas of your business are currently vulnerable to attack – and can help you grade the seriousness of each threat. Attend to the most serious matters first, and look at the rest in order of importance.
The key to a successful risk assessment lies in involving the right people. On your own, you will never be able to identify everything that could possibly go wrong, or the places where intruders may strike. Get your department heads and team leaders involved. Talk to your warehouse manager. The people who work for an with you have expertise you need: let them tell you whether they have seen any threats to your premises or your property.
Look at your employees
Unfortunately, one of the greatest risks to any business is the employee. Lots of instances of employees stealing from their employer are “innocent”, in that the employee genuinely doesn’t realise that he or she is doing wrong: but from your point of view, they can represent a serious threat to the integrity of your profit margins.
Implement a clear policy on what does, and what does not, constitute acceptable behaviour from an employee – and have it written into the contracts signed by your staff. Look at and verify the employment history of the people who come to work for you, and chase up references to make sure you are employing trustworthy and hard working individuals. Make sure you have every confidence in all staff members, but particularly where those members have access to your keys, or to money, or to relevant security information.
Keep control of your stock
If you can tell exactly where your stock is at all times, you are less likely to misplace money in the long run. The regular stock take is your friend – as is a policy of coming down hard on any large discrepancies between what should be there and what is.
Laziness is a habit that gets hard to break – and where stock counts are concerned, it’s all too easy to start as you didn’t mean to go on. Yes, a stock take is time consuming and annoying – but it’s a lot less annoying than discovering you’ve been ripped off and having no idea where to start looking for the point where things started to go wrong.
Employ outside help
Security firms do more than just man the gate sand check people in and out of your building. A competent firm of security guards is able to put a whole business security plan in place, keeping tabs on what comes in and goes out of your building as well as who. Have a look at http://www.anchorsec.co.za for more information on business security.
The Author is an ex military tactical commander, who now runs his own firm of security advisers. His business has been involved in security consultations for a number of high level national and international names and companies – from testing the security of national bank vaults to arranging tour security for big name pop stars.