The Dangers of Being An Understaffed Security
In an article that I wrote, “The Basics of Hiring Security Guards: Who, Where, When, and How,” I outlined some basic principles of the security guard hiring process. In this chapter, I will go into further detail on this subject, including a concept that I call “continuous interviewing.” I’ll explain this practice later in the chapter, but first I want to elaborate on situations that you might find yourself in if you choose not to.
One of the biggest problems of being understaffed is the inability to cover open posts and consequently incurring excessive officer overtime. “Acceptable” overtime in many industries ranges from 2% to 9%. But in the security guard industry, any amount of overtime is unacceptable. That is because in most contracts, officer overtime is non-billable. Having adequate staffing levels gives you and your schedulers the flexibility that you need in responding to call-offs, no-shows, and temporary service orders.
At our company, we practiced keeping an inordinately high number of part-time/flex officers on staff at any given time. Many of these officers were hired during times when we didn’t need additional personnel, but we found that this practice helped us drastically reduce overtime. I must admit, that although we reduced overtime, we increased the number of unhappy officers who felt that they weren’t getting enough hours. But again, the increased complaints were worth the reduced overtime.
I was recently speaking to a security guard company manager about a problem that he was having with his officers not submitting daily activity reports at the end of their shifts. Our conversation quickly moved from our software to his disciplinary process and what happens when officers don’t follow procedure. He explained that when his officers did not submit their DARs, they were removed from the schedule and would not be put back on until they came to the office to talk with management. I followed up by asking whether or not he had terminated any officers for not following their standard operating procedures. It has been my experience that sometimes you have to set an example for your staff by terminating problem officers. He said that in his case, he had terminated one officer, but it didn’t work because other officers were still non-compliant. He later admitted that he was hesitant to fire any other officers because of insufficient staffing levels…that’s a problem.
There are two lessons on inadequate staffing to be learned from that conversation. First, being understaffed will make you accept behavior that you would otherwise find totally unacceptable. I am pretty sure that if this manager had sufficient staffing levels, he would have happily terminated every officer that was not in compliance with their post orders. But because of poor staffing levels, he was stuck with officers who weren’t acting in the best interest of his company or clients.
Second, understaffing will allow bad behavior to metastasize to the other officers in your organization. I have learned from personal experience that word travels fast about not having to do your job. I can hear the conversation right now:
Officer 1: Hey Officer 2, you do daily activity reports?
Officer 2: Yeah, don’t you?
Officer 1: Naw, they don’t really care if you turn them in or not. It’s just busy work.
Officer 2: Really? Then I’m not doing them either!
You can probably imagine different versions of this same conversation occurring across his security guard force. When you have one bad officer, it is of the utmost importance that you remove that officer from your employee roster before his or her bad habits spread.
Finally, understaffing will eventually lead to improper training of your officers. I have seen this happen time and time again. When you or your supervisory team are busy covering shifts and putting out fires, the amount of time that you need to spend training your officers, especially the new ones, will suffer. In most cases, having an under-trained security force is a problem that just sort of creeps up on you.
When you are pressed to fill a shift, your biggest priority isn’t training the fill-in officers; it is getting him or her on post. Oftentimes, at that point you decide that the officer who is being relieved can train the new officer until a supervisor has a chance to train them. But when you are understaffed, that supervisory training rarely ever happens. Those situations will continue to happen until one day you look up and you have a lot of officers who aren’t familiar with their SOPs.
These are the main ways that understaffing negatively affects your security company’s operations, but there are likely others. Unfortunately, keeping your company fully staffed with qualified officers can be tricky. Next we’ll look at how to go about finding and hiring officers who will keep your customers happy and your business running smoothly.