What You Need to Know About Security Management, Today!

Have you ever found yourself wondering, “Why does security take up so many of my working hours?”

You are not alone in the suffering. Back in the day, we used to think that security wasn’t a complex matter.  We performed our periodic checks of the property by walking around with a pen and notebook, writing down all of our observations.

Later on, we learned that we need to store the observations so we started typing them in Word documents or Excel spreadsheets to make reports easier.

Now we have security cameras that are recording 24 hours a day, but our inspection process remains the same.

Why aren’t our processes more complex?
How can we be sure that we have all the information and that our reports are comprehensive?

The truth is, as facilities grow, technology becomes more complex. Large facilities also have more people reporting, so we need to keep up with the pace of change. That means that we have to change our method for performing inspections.

Here are four main trends from the retail industry that you need to know about, and learn from, if you’re going to be successful at managing your security today.

1. Employee Turnover

Employee turnover is one of the biggest issues facing retailers. This is connected to people not feeling like they belong in the company so they have no commitment to stay. Rapid turnovers mean an increased focus on information management for security professionals. Thus, consider the happiness and motivation of your employees to reduce turnover. At the same time, create a good information management strategy and a system for turnover so that no crucial details will be lost.   

2. Loss Prevention

This is probably the most annoying topic for any retailer, but regardless of the annoyance, it happens year after year. Retailers approach the subject the same every year by asking, “How do we ensure better loss prevention management?”

In reality, you can never be sure who is shoplifting from you, but you can make the effort to try to protect your business from shrinkage. This can be done through better security check measures. 

The President of the American Management Association, James L. Hayes, famously said “Many retailers actually sponsor stealing by choosing to believe that the cost to prevent it exceeds the cost of allowing it to exist.”

To prevent shrinkage, you need to invest in a better reporting system. Such a system can help you tackle deviations as they arrive.
Read more about this topic in our blog post on 5 Survival Tips for Retailers on Black Friday.

Loss prevention management is not just related to retailers alone. There is a lot that other industries can learn by observing how retailers are managing their finances, security, employees, and facilities.

3. Digitalisation is on the Rise

Albert Einstein famously said, “Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

This quote applies to anything related to the traditional ways of doing things. When you stick with tradition, you fail to change with the pace of time.

Now you are thinking to yourself, “I’m not insane!” and perhaps laughing a little bit.

Before you write the saying off, ask yourself:

• Is your security reporting still performed by pen and paper?
• Do you still have complex ways of managing incident reporting?
• Is reporting handled by several people and systems throughout the organisation?
• Is your reporting decentralised?

If you can answer yes to any of these, I invite you to read the quote from Einstein again.

The rise of the digital revolution is now. Companies that fail to follow the necessary digital conversions will inevitably experience a downfall.
You can’t just convert to digital for your online shop or social media accounts. You also need to make the conversion for your physical facilities.

Digitalisation brings about faster-paced customer behaviour. This means if your online marketing is done right, you will have more customers in your shops.

To handle this, you need a better security management system that you can use to report all deviations and incidents during a 24-hour period.
This goes beyond CCTV and includes a system for reporting. A check tool might be just what you need to ensure that everything goes smoothly.

With check-tech, you can report instantly.  You can notify the right people and call for backup if needed all at once.
If you don’t currently have a check-tech system, I urge you to look into getting one this year. Not only will it help your employees report incidents faster, but you will get better reports as well as automated statistics. That enables you can act faster every time any incident occurs.

4. Management of Security Auditing Processes

Many retailers believe that a small team of people is responsible for security and reporting. In reality, everyone handles safety and security at the company. The management of this will be easier for you once you have a check-tech system implemented. You can activate everyone in the organisation to report incidents and deviations. It will be centralised on one platform and it will automatically generate reports for you. This will make security reporting much easier. As a result, you can sleep better at night knowing that everything is under control.  

Security management doesn’t have to be difficult to administer. Digitalisation is here and can help you in loss prevention, reporting, and inspections.
Focus your energy on engaging your employees.  Give them the proper training they need in order for them to understand how important they are. In addition, show them how to make reports with check-tech. This is a formula for growth that you can’t afford to miss. When implementing a check-tech system, you are automatically embarking on a life with VUCA, where you are able to be ahead of potential issues, errors, mistakes and deviations. 

If you want to hear more about the subject, don't hesitate contacting us for more details - we're here for you.

For a real life example on how a company transformed their security operations, read the ITIS Case Study.

We are building the world's first operational involvement platform. Our mission is to make the process of finding, sharing, fixing and learning from issues and observations as easy as thinking about them and as rewarding as being remembered for them.‍

By doing this, we are making work more meaningful for all parties involved.

More information at falcony.io.