The safety of employees is of the utmost concern for any business owner or manager. Especially if you have night staff, they are at significant risk of burglaries or robberies in the darkness of the evening. Check out these tips for boosting night shift employee safety for some security measures your business could implement.
CCTV
Video cameras boost employee safety by acting as a deterrent to potential criminals while also catching any suspects in the act. If there is a robbery or attack on your building or staff member, you don’t want it to happen without any evidence. It becomes much harder for law enforcement to build leads and identify a suspect without a recording. So, CCTV should be installed at every business, both inside and out.
Improve Exterior Lighting
Increasing your exterior lighting helps ward of offenders because it increases the risk of being seen, recognized, or caught during the act. Also, unless you have night vision cameras, the lighting will help provide viability for the CCTV.
Another side effect of improved exterior lighting is your employees will feel more comfortable outside, so there is an increased chance of people acting as informal surveillance as they take a smoke or spend their break outdoors.
Peephole on Backdoor
Before opening any exterior doors, your employees must know what is on the other side. Otherwise, they could unknowingly walk into a potentially dangerous situation. For robbers looking for access into the building, they could be lurking by the exits, especially at night when viability is low. Your front doors will typically have windows that you can look through, but the backdoor often will be a steel door without a view of the outside. However, your employees can check for any threats with a peephole before opening the door.
Crisis Training
If there is a break-in or robbery while you have nightshift employees on-site, the situation can escalate quickly. Should a panic or fear set in, they might make mistakes that could lead to other employees or themselves getting hurt. So, you’ll want to ensure that everyone working the night shift goes through crisis training to teach them how to remain calm and act in their best interests during an emergency. You can replace the merchandise, not their lives.
Buddy Car System
Another strategy your company could implement that doesn’t require any security installations is enforcing a buddy for those going into the parking lot at night. The odds of someone getting attacked with another person there are far less than if the victim was alone, so employees can protect one another by walking each other out to their cars at night.
After exploring these tips for boosting night shift employee safety, you can make the necessary changes at your business to better protect your staff members.
