Proving value in the security guarding industry is complicated. When things are quiet, people tend to assume that there are no problems; when incidents happen, on the other hand, management sees it as the fault of the security personnel. External events and factors beyond our control should not be the way we measure the ongoing performance of the guard force. Traditional performance indicators – spend versus budget, reduction in incidents by frequency and severity, as well as shortened response time – often used by security managers, decision makers, and those who control budget, completely miss the true performance of the individual security professional.
So how do you measure that? Training and standards exist throughout the guarding industry: every guarding company, client, and state has its own version of it. Measuring adherence and performance is often subjective and sometimes misguided as it is very difficult to observe and manage a decentralized and distributed workforce 24/7. Field supervisors and frontline managers can do surprise inspections, spot checks, and even review video footage to see how their team is performing. However, these methods only capture a snapshot in time. Management is not truly able to measure the performance of the guard carrying out their duties in real-time, nor aggregate performance metrics over time (i.e. over many shifts). We theorized we could better measure real time guard performance through our App by recording things like check-in and location, then applying data analytics and standardized measurement criteria, we could objectively track the performance of a pool of guards.