Your commercial building should be safe and secure, whether it’s a small enterprise or a multinational corporation. Proper security will keep your premises, staff, and assets safe at all times. Fortunately, there are many ways to beef up security in a commercial building. Here are some of the necessary services to keep your commercial building safe and secure.
1. Develop a Security Culture
Charity begins at home. That said, you should build and maintain a security culture in your commercial building to ensure safety and security. You should first instill the concept that security belongs to everyone, from the cleaning staff to the executive staff. Everyone in the building should act as security personnel to promote safety and security.
As the commercial building owner, introduce security measures and policies concerning emergency procedures and staff and visitor restrictions. The measures should also include how employees and other staff handle property within the commercial building. The measures and policies could include key management policy, personnel security policy, and acceptable use policy. Review the security measures and policies with your entire staff and inform them what is expected.
Besides writing the rules and reviewing them with your staff, please encourage them to voice their concerns about various security issues. Advise them to suggest some security rules that could work. It would help to provide your staff with fun and engaging security training to develop a sustainable security culture throughout the organization. Also, encourage them to report any suspicious activities happening in the building that could jeopardize security. Make a habit of rewarding employees or departments who abide by the security culture.
2. Maintain the Commercial Building
Lack of routine building maintenance puts the safety and security of your commercial building at risk. That is because people can easily find loopholes to access your business. Regular maintenance of your commercial building is significant in keeping it safe and secure.
Routine maintenance helps to increase functionality. Regular maintenance will prevent assets from deteriorating, help to identify weak points and prevent breakdowns associated with lack of inspection and fine-tuning.
Consistent maintenance will make your commercial building reliable to perform tasks at the expected level in an efficient way. Hardware and software in the commercial building should receive regular updates to enhance uptime and increase their lifespan.
Perform routine fire safety system maintenance to ensure your fire extinguishing systems work when you need them. Inspect the central control panel and sprinkler heads. Ensure they are working properly. If there are any issues with your fire system, an expert will conduct fire violation corrections. Put a commercial fire extinguisher at every strategic place within your building’s interior and exterior.
Another maintenance service you can do to ensure safety and security is to hire a commercial elevator service company to inspect and tune in your elevators. They will check for any signs of elevator problems, diagnose issues, and conduct the necessary repair to improve the integrity of elevators.
Repetitive maintenance like installing strong doors and doing commercial roofing repairs effectively enhances safety and security. Repair or replace a damaged commercial fence, warehouse doors, windows, and locks. Acquire fences, doors, and windows from high quality steel supplier if your current ones need replacement. Inspecting and repairing, or replacing your property’s fencing and gates will also help make your commercial building safe and secure from outside intruders.
Lastly, it is advisable to trim bushes and trees and landscape your property. A well-trimmed landscape will give people in your commercial building a clear view of the whole property. This will prevent people from hiding on your property. Proper landscaping can also help eliminate animals that can pose safety risks.
3. Incorporate an Access Control System
Incorporating an access control system will safeguard your commercial building from unauthorized access. Secure access control can use keys and identification badges to allow access. Overall, an access control system reduces the number of keys available and simplifies entry and exit 24/7.
Highly sophisticated access control systems use biometrics like fingerprints and facial features to verify people before giving them entry access. Such a system is reliable for employees who don’t have to walk with keys and increases security levels because biometric features are difficult to counterfeit. Former employees cannot access your building using older keys. New employees can be easily given access to various building areas after the biometrics features have been uploaded to the access control system.
Secure access control systems have multiple options, allowing you to customize your system based on your budget, security needs, and the level of control you want in your building. Some businesses need high-level control, while others need less control.
Whatever secure access control system you decide to use, ensure your employees knows how it works. Prohibit employees from giving or sharing their access keys or badges. Encourage them to report any incidences, such as losing keys or identification badges, to the relevant department as soon as possible.
4. Use Active Surveillance
Another way to make your commercial building safe and secure is to add surveillance. Surveillance can effectively protect your commercial building from outsiders. The surveillance can also protect your assets and belongings from rogue employees.
Install surveillance cameras on your property’s perimeter, every entry and exit, and other strategic areas like the stairs and balconies. Also, put proper signage in different parts of your commercial building to prevent would-be criminals. To enhance your surveillance system, you can incorporate laser sensors and thermal-imaging cameras that can easily detect intruders and alert authorities in case of security breaches.
The surveillance system should focus on capturing videos instead of photos. It would be best to acquire all-weather cameras with day and night vision, power backup, voice capability, and zoom-in options. Surveillance cannot prevent invaders from entering your building, stealing belongings, and damaging property. It just helps to capture events taking place in the building. Although surveillance can help identify intruders, it cannot mitigate risk. Therefore, have some security personnel monitor the surveillance system all the time. Live monitoring promotes early detection and deters crime before it happens.
Have a backup system to keep all the recordings to prevent footage losses if an employee orchestrates a security breach and deletes videos to hide evidence. The backup system should only be accessible by a few top staff in the building.
5. Secure Valuables
Ensure personal and company valuables are secured at all times. Your staff should keep personal items, such as purses, wallets, and keys, in a locked cabinet or room. If there is no locked cabinets or rooms available, have personal items supervised at all times.
If your line of business accepts cash payments, make frequent bank deposits during regular working hours to limit the amount of money you have in your cash registers. This will keep your money safe from theft and other potential losses. Also, hire a commercial factoring company to safeguard your cash flow.
Have your staff put valuable items in a locked room or cabinet at the end of every working day. All windows and doors should also be locked when your commercial building closes up for the day. Have a combination safe where cash and other valuables can be kept. The combination safe should be waterproof and fireproof. Put the safe in a secure location.
It would also be best to insure them against potential losses like fire, water, and theft. You will be able to receive your valuables if they get lost or damaged. It would also be prudent to record the serial numbers of costly equipment and keep multiple documents in different areas. This will help track them down in case they get lost. You can also invest in commercial storm shelters
6. Hire a Security Company
Another excellent way to make your commercial building safe and secure is to hire a security company. A security company has highly-trained security officers to help keep your building secure. Depending on your security needs, you can work with round-the-clock security officers or on-demand officers.
Security officers can enhance safety and security in your business in different ways. They can safeguard all entry and exit points, provide perimeter patrol, or respond to emergencies, such as fire outbreaks and illegal invasions.
Consider deploying security officers to patrol and monitor entries and exits in the parking spaces. That is because parking spaces and garages are usually crime hot spots, especially if isolated or unsupervised. Security officers will secure your commercial garage door and ensure your parking spaces are safe.
Security officers will also look after your commercial building after regular working hours, weekends, and holidays. They will be on the lookout for any security concerns and handle them accordingly. They will also provide you with up-to-date reports about security in your commercial building. Invest in security officers to increase safety and security in your commercial building.
7. Routine Risk Assessment Checks
Another great way to improve safety and security in your commercial building is to conduct routine risk assessment checks. It only takes one loophole in your commercial building security to affect your business. Besides assessing your building’s security, an expert will evaluate crime rates in your local area. A risk assessment expert can easily identify weaknesses in your security, potential threats, and the possibility of attacks based on these evaluations.
A professional risk assessor will advise you on improving security measures, protocols, and technologies after conducting a comprehensive risk assessment to help you improve your commercial building’s safety and security.
8. Screen and Escort All Guests
Not all guests visiting your commercial building have good intentions. Therefore, uninvited or unannounced guests should not be allowed to enter your building. Put a reception space near your building’s main entrance to receive visitors and collect information from them. The information collected should include their name and purpose for visiting the premises.
If the visits are verified, the guests should be escorted to the individuals they want to see. They should also be escorted back to the exit after they are done with their visits. Guests should not be allowed to wander the premises at any given time.
Guests should be given special identity badges to ensure convenience to help identify them. The badges should be dissimilar to the ones given to employees. The guests should wear the badge during their visit and wear them once they exit your commercial building. Recording and keeping track of all guests entering and leaving a building is paramount in ensuring security.
9. Manage Employees
Another method companies use to secure and safeguard their commercial buildings is managing incoming employees. As a general rule of thumb, you should do background checks during the hiring process. A background check will allow you to hire reputable and honest employees. Also, ask the employees to provide proper documentation and references from previous employers.
Apart from managing incoming employees, companies should also manage outgoing employees. One measure you can take to manage outgoing employees is to conduct exit interviews. The meeting should involve a human resource staff and outgoing employee’s supervisor to finalize the contract and work on the remaining terms.
After the interview, the employee should hand over any company property in their possession, including keys, identity badges, phones, computer equipment, and other items. Any credit cards or emails belonging to the employee should be canceled. Also, passwords should be changed, and the employee’s details should be deleted from the organization’s security and access control systems.
10. Incorporate Cybercrime Protection
Last but not least, one can be caught up in improving physical security and forget about cybersecurity. Companies are prone to cybercrime in the digital era. Cybercriminals can easily hack into systems to steal, leak, or destroy important data.
Implement cyber security in your commercial building to protect it from cybercrimes and criminals. You can achieve this by hiring cybersecurity experts and investing in antivirus and firewall security. Use VPN to privatize connections and avid opening malicious emails. Keep your software and hardware up-to-date. You should also change computer and system passwords frequently and use backups to store important data.
Ensuring safety and security is paramount in keeping your commercial building and valuables safe at all times. Use these steps to keep your building safe and secure.
