What Your Night-Shift Security Team Can Teach You

During the day, your wider team is in constant communication to keep your residential building running effectively. Once the working day is done for many, it’s usually security staff who handle ongoing tenant issues.

With this in mind, how strong is the communication between your night-shift guards and daytime staff? The two sides need to communicate effectively to ensure no issues spotted at night go unresolved.

Without regular discussions and updates, you might believe the status quo is working when it isn’t. Furthermore, regional managers won’t have a clear view of what’s going on and how they can help.

For your residents, it means recurring problems are never found and fixed. This could lead to them becoming unhappy and considering a move when their lease is up for renewal.

Your security team also can’t be utilised to its full extent. Guards often write down the night’s details in a log book, but crucial long-term lessons are missed using this outdated method.

Logbooks can be used to solve a problem that arose the night before, but they don’t address long-term trends. If security guards regularly notice a weak spot used by unauthorized people to gain entry, how is the problem solved? Is a bigger team needed for patrols? Can a guard from a quiet spot be moved to a problem area, using their time more effectively?

A modern security management system makes trends more apparent than a logbook. This data can then be analysed to evaluate current practices, giving you all the information you need to make informed decisions. With updates sent straight to your email inbox, reports can’t be missed or ignored in the same way logbooks can.

Security guards witness a side to your residents and buildings that daytime staff rarely see. They’re a fountain of knowledge that mostly goes untapped.

Your night-shift security team can teach you a lot about residential operations. Here’s just some of the ways they can help.

Guards Can Point Out Maintenance Issues

There’s never a good time for assets to break or shut down. For tenants, it can be worse when something stops working and there’s no one around who can solve the problem such as a tradesperson.

Your security team will usually be made aware of the situation — particularly if a problem is affecting tenant safety. Some of the more common problems security staff see at night include:

• Lifts breaking down
• Power failures
• Water leaks
• Fire, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms being triggered

Some issues might stop just as quickly as they started. Maybe the lights only go out for five minutes, or perhaps an alarm sounds because the battery is running low.

Regardless, these incidents are still important for you to know. Any issues with the lights could underline a serious electrical problem, and if one alarm needs replacement batteries, the other alarms will also need to be checked.

There is no such thing as a trivial maintenance issue. Having your security guards report problems can help you spot trends. Security service management software can make this easier by allowing guards to report problems quickly with pre-build databases.

Security Can Help You Understand a Tenant’s Mindset

The people skills of security teams are very much underrated. They notice things that might otherwise go unchecked, and they have a way of handling the situation.

Chances are, some of your tenants will be struggling in one way or another. According to Mind, 1 in 4 people in England experience a mental health problem problem.

Your residents might be having a hard time at work, or maybe they’re feeling lonely. If any incident occurs that is the result of poor mental health, it needs to be addressed immediately.

Incidents don’t have to be serious. Other tenants might be complaining about excessive noise, maybe an argument is taking place in a communal area, or perhaps a resident is noticeably under the influence in the hallways. When your security goes to resolve the situation, they will hear the resident’s side of the story, and that is what you need to pay attention to.

Antisocial behaviour that stems from mental health can be worked on. If your security detail is telling you a tenant is feeling isolated, try to come up with new events and social activities they can take part in. Talk to residents yourself the next day and see what it is you can do to help.

Students in PBSA are particularly vulnerable, and may need extra support. It’s estimated that 1-in-3 students experience depression or loneliness, and the 2020 report from Knight Frank & UCAS shows us 81% of students rank ‘groups to reduce isolation’ as important.

To help you spot these issues, our own security service management software comes with ‘Mental Health’ as an option in the ‘Incident Type’ section.

They Can Help Improve Your Security

The main job of any security team is to keep your residents and building safe and secure.

Burglaries, antisocial behaviour, excessive drinking and use of drugs pose a threat in any residential area from cul-de-sacs to BTR developments and purpose-built student accommodation. Tenants pay for security in BTR and PBSA, so it’s essential that their needs are being met and there’s no risk to their physical wellbeing.

There were over 402,000 burglaries in the UK between 2019/20. While this type of crime has seen a significant reduction in recent years, these numbers are still high. In April 2020, England and Wales saw 178,000 antisocial behaviour incidents in a four-week period, which is an increase of 59% from the same time period in 2019.

Using security service management software, your night-shift security team can quickly compile data on where the biggest problem hotspots are when most of your staff have gone home.

If there’s a group continuously causing a disturbance outside a tenant’s window, you might consider setting an hourly patrol to keep an eye on things. If tenants are misbehaving in communal areas, extra CCTV can act as a deterrent. Maybe non-residents are finding a way into the building and causing distress, meaning doors and windows need to be checked.

Residential buildings aren’t the easiest properties to keep secure. There are hundreds of tenants to protect, plenty of entry points and endless areas that cannot be constantly monitored. Communicating with your night-shift team through an information security management system helps you understand where problems are, so you can make a decision on where to focus efforts.

How Does Security Service Management Software Help?

There are three key reasons why property managers should use an information security management system:

• To save guards time
• To reduce unnecessary paperwork
• To encourage intelligent, data-driven management decisions

Our solution — Propsecured — is designed to be as straightforward as possible. Using any mobile device, guards can quickly report incidents of any type in real-time. Their findings are automatically generated into morning reports, which can be forwarded to daytime management staff.

With monthly reports, you can take a detailed look for any patterns, so you can focus on problem areas or review practices.

Data gathered from your night-shift security team helps you make smarter decisions. By regularly reviewing reports and communicating with guards, you can get ahead of underlying issues, save money and keep residents happy.

For more details on how security service management software can help improve safety, wellbeing and streamline security guard services, get in touch with Fjeld Consulting’s Propsecured team today.