How to Create an Effective Security Routine in Your Office

As a business owner, you want to protect your property and your employees. And you wonder what you can do to make your office a secure place.

Today, we will answer all your questions and give you tips on how to create an effective security routine and prevent personal theft and other crimes in the workplace. Let’s get started.

1. Start with Developing a Workplace Culture around Security

Do you know that neglected security or just plain ignorance of your employees may ruin your business?

If your employee tells about your pricey office equipment to someone he hardly knows that may lead to an office robbery. If a worker clicks a suspicious email link, your system may suffer from a phishing attack.

Your task is to preach and prioritize physical security and cybersecurity in the workplace and build a strong company culture. You should make sure that your employees are aware of possible risks, and they know how to minimize them.

2. Assign Employees to Specific Tasks

To secure your office, you should assign specific tasks to concrete employees. Otherwise, it will not work.

If you say to your employees: “let’s lock every window before we leave office”, it’s highly likely that a few windows will be left unlocked. One employee might ignore your words. A few others might simply forget to do what you are asking for.

You should better put it this way: “Susan, you are responsible for checking windows on the first floor. Garry, you will check windows on the second floor. Chris, you are responsible for closing the front door and turning on the alarm system.”

That’s the only right way to manage security in the office. Once everyone has a clear understanding of who is responsible for what, all the tasks will be completed.

3. Run Effective Security Awareness Training

Every business owner is responsible for teaching and educating employees about security vulnerabilities.

So we highly suggest you run security awareness training at least once in a quarter. Here are a few tips that will help you to make your training more effective:

• Create relevant content. Use recent case studies, stories from other countries, or other industries.
• Make your employees comfortable. Start your training at 10 a.m. (not at 7 a.m.), provide snacks, make a 15-minutes break every 45 minutes.
• Engage your employees in conversation. Encourage them to ask you any questions.
• Consider a few “What-if” situations (e.g., “what will you do if someone asks you to share your building access badge?”)

Raise your employees’ awareness of physical security and cybersecurity and make your organization less vulnerable to crimes.

4. Write a Guideline

To create an effective security routine, you should write a short guideline for your employees. You should put all your ideas and directions on the paper and specify all the aspects of physical security and cybersecurity. You should create one document and share it with your employees.

A well-written document will come in handy when you are onboarding new employees. You will save your time on explaining basic safety rules to a newbie – all important information will be presented in one file.

Just make sure that you write the document in a simple language. Avoid using jargon and sophisticated security-related terms. Make your guideline accessible for employees with different backgrounds (technical and non-technical).

5. Test your alarm system

When have you tested your alarm system the last time? You need to run a test and change your password regularly. You can do it weekly, semi-weekly, or monthly. It depends on the type of alarm system you are using and the crime situation in your neighborhood.

Also, you should show your employees where the panic button is located and how to use it. And you should buy new security equipment, once your current equipment gets outdated.

6. Get Your Employees Backup Important Files

Will your business survive if you lost all of your files in one day?

We live in the digital world, and we must protect our business data as the most valuable asset.

You need to back up all the important files so you can retrieve them in case of a cyber-attack or system glitch. You should explain to your employees what specific business data must be protected and what files must be backed up. You can implement automatic backups, or let your employees do backup separate files manually.

Final thoughts

The safety of your office is in your hands. If you want robbers, hackers, and other criminals to stay away from your business, you should create an effective security routine. You should educate your employees, design a clear guideline, and use advanced security systems.

If you feel like you can’t complete one of these tasks by yourself, don’t hesitate to get help from security experts.

About the author: Daniela McVicker is a professional writer and content manager for the aggregator of the best paper writing services TopWritersReview. She graduated from Durham University and has an MA in Psychological Science. Besides doing her work as an editor and writer, Daniela has been applying her knowledge of psychology and marketing in order to contribute some valuable insights to business owners.