Are your officers doing their job? A guard tour system can help you make sure.

Where was your security guard working last week?

January 11, 2011

Although it is a well-known fact that the contract security industry has a high turnover rate, we haven't found any authoritative figures. Guard companies are understandably reluctant to share this sort of internal data. The numbers we have seen range from 60% to 300%. Even a 60% annual turnover is a remarkable figure. A vice president at a large national guard company once told us that the annual turnover rate for their officers was 225% per year.

We work with most of the guard companies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. In our experience, their operations managers and staff are dedicated individuals who work hard to provide an important service to their customers despite a difficult environment. High officer turnover is just one of the problems they face. Competition — the need to shave a few cents off of the hourly rate — limits the resources they can provide to their customers. So in most cases, your guard company isn't going to recommend a guard tour system to you. You need to ask.

What do these turnover figures mean? If you use a contract guarding company, there's a good chance the security officer assigned to your account was working somewhere else just a few months or weeks ago. Why did he move? Maybe it was for better pay, or better hours, or better working conditions. Or maybe the officer guarding your facility was dismissed.

It's easy to assume that the officers your guard company provides are doing their job, and that their managers are making sure of it — but that isn't always the case. Stories of sleeping security officers make the news periodically, including one famous incident at a nuclear power plant a few years ago.

A guard tour system can help you spot problems early and confirm that your officers do their job properly.