Keeping your business premises protected is vital to ensure expensive equipment is kept safe, and employees have a secure place to work. Intruder alarms, CCTV and access control systems can all provide a level of protection.
However, if any of these security systems are triggered out of hours, it’s your nominated keyholders who will receive the notification. Often these are your employees, and they have the responsibility to ensure the correct action is taken. When the activation is a false alarm, they need to attend site to reset security systems when false alarms occur.
This can be daunting out of hours and potentially puts your employee at risk. The following tips help to minimise risk to employees and are best practice for keyholding and alarm response.
Select the Right Keyholders
Being a nominated keyholder is a serious responsibility for an employee, so you should only choose those with the relevant levels of seniority. Having access to your business premises requires a lot of trust in an employee, so it’s best to choose people who will take the role seriously and understand the level of responsibility it carries.
Ideally, keyholders will live close to business premises to ensure a fast response. This helps to minimise the time your premises is left unprotected. It also ensures genuine alarm activations are acted on quickly.
We recommend full training for the position. Knowing what to do in each potential situation is vital for your employee’s safety and security. There may also be some incentive to take on the responsibility of the role. Either an additional salary payment or an on-call allowance for the nights covered.
Ensure Intruder Alarms are Maintained
Regular servicing of your security systems is vital. Not only to ensure it works correctly when it’s needed the most but to also minimise false alarms through faulty parts.
Having keyholders in place, or even a professional keyholding and alarm response service to help protect your business is useless if your intruder alarm system doesn’t trigger in the event of a break-in.
Your insurance company may insist on regular maintenance of security systems as part of your insurance terms and conditions. If these conditions aren’t met, then you’re putting your business at serious risk. However, having your systems maintained and having a keyholding and alarm response service in place may help reduce your insurance premiums.
Consider a Professional Keyholding & Alarm Response Service
It may be the case that you don’t have any employees that you’d put in the position of keyholder. Perhaps you only have short-term staff, or you don’t want to put any of your employees in the position of extra responsibility or danger.
If that is the case, then outsourcing your keyholding responsibilities may be the solution. A professional keyholding and alarm response service will ensure your premises are protected and your employees are safe. Professional security guards are specifically trained to attend these types of on-site incidents and will take any stress away from yourself and your staff.
Professional guards can search the grounds surrounding your business, and in the event of a break in will initiate the correct response, taking away the burden of these responsibilities and the danger away from your staff.
BusinessWatch Guarding provides professional keyholding and alarm response services in Peterborough and across Cambridgeshire.
If you’re:
- looking for a keyholding and alarm response service for your business or
- not happy with your incumbent security service
then contact us on 01733 942799 for a free, no obligation quotation today. One of our expert Guarding Consultants will be able to discuss your requirements, and if required, arrange a suitable time to conduct a free site survey.
