The Dangers of Being An Understaffed Security Company

In a previous article that I wrote titled The Basics of Hiring Security Guards: Who, Where, When, and How I outlined some basic principles on the security guard hiring process.  In that article under the section “When To  Hire”, I discuss a concept that I call “Continuous Interviewing.”  In that section I briefly touched on why you should be engaging in this practice.  In this article I will elaborate on situations that you might find yourself in if you choose not to.

Understaffed? Your Officers Will Love The Overtime

One of the biggest problems of being understaffed is the inability to cover open posts and consequently incurring excessive officer overtime.  In the research that I have done,
“Acceptable” overtime in many industries ranges from 2% – 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. But I must admit,  that although we reduced overtime, we increased the number of unhappy officers who felt that they weren’t getting enough hours.

Understaffed? You’re Going To Make Some Bad Decisions

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 shift.  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 DAR’s, 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.

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/her bad habits spread.

Understaffed? Your Training Program Will Suffer

Last but not least, understaffing will eventually lead to improperly training 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 just sort of creeps up on you.

When you are pressed to fill a shift, your biggest priority isn’t training the fill-in officer, it is getting him/her on post.  Oftentimes at that point you make the decision that the officer that 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.

There are probably dozens of other ways that understaffing negatively affects your security company’s operations, but we will leave it here for now.  If you manage a security guard force how do you prevent running into the problems of understaffing?  Is there a certain percentage of part-time/flex officers that you like to have on staff?  Please feel free to leave your comments below.

 

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By Courtney Sparkman

 

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