How to secure employees in your maintenance service

Every business needs to ensure that it meets employee health and safety regulations. Having organizational security and safety processes makes it easier to manage and prevent theft, injury, and damages that might occur in the workplace. Besides having security measures in place, it’s also your responsibility as a business owner to make sure that your employees follow your guidelines. 

When working in maintenance service, the office isn’t the usual workplace. Employees mainly work in the field when completing jobs. So while you may have some security measures in place for your main office, it’s important to not forget that all of the locations where your technicians work need to be secured as well. 

If you’re not sure we to start, we’ve compiled a few suggestions to help you get the ball rolling. 

Let’s get into them.

Using a time tracking software

Time tracking software is a type of software that helps employees record time while working on jobs and projects. A wide range of businesses, especially those that specialize in maintenance services, make use of this transparent and productive software. It’s extremely efficient because it saves a lot of long hours that would have been spent doing paperwork, calculating payroll, logging everything, and more. 

Having a paper record of projects is not always the best approach anymore because of the growing number of projects, employees, and tasks to keep in check at the same time. In today’s world, it just isn’t feasible to manage everything on paper anymore. With Atto, for example, you can track vacations, breaks, sick time, working hours, payroll, and more. 

One feature that helps you secure your employees during work is GPS tracking. You can enable this feature to allow employees to record the location of jobs sites and routes. This works fantastically well for businesses in maintenance service because managers are always aware of the locations where each team is. 

Businesses are held responsible for any injuries and security issues that happen at the workplace. Those that work in maintenance are met with the challenge of having multiple workplaces. That’s why you need to find a time tracking software that allows you to also use GPS tracking. With Atto, you can even mark specific locations as workplaces, so that employees can clock in only when they are at that location. This way, if something happens, you can act fast and also have everything logged automatically for further review. 

Involving employees in security planning

 Involving your employees in the planning process gives them a sense of responsibility whenever it comes to security and safety.  This way, they’ll feel more secure and safe when taking part in all necessary meetings and discussions because they’re more aware of policies that are put in place. It also promotes a workplace culture of collaboration and openness to ideas, which in turn fosters a sense of belonging. 

Having suggestions from different mindsets can also help in formulating better strategies. It becomes very important for the employees of your maintenance service to report all their concerns in time. They can also report their issues anonymously if they feel that they’re uncomfortable when speaking about such things directly to management. Try bringing this topic up in your next team meetings, ask for your employees' feedback on what they think should be done to secure the workplace. 

Educating your employees about security 

Training your employees for basic things like time management and office etiquette is indeed beneficial. But, spending a little more time educating every single employee on which strategies to follow when dealing with potential security threats or uncanny situations is relatively more important. This is because this training can help prepare them for unexpected situations and prevent the loss of property and injury. This will undoubtedly promote a healthy workplace environment for better and productive work and healthy relations between employees and management.

A few primary areas that should be included in the training of employees of any business to better tackle unexpected security risks are:

• Safe practices while starting & ending a job

• Processing and handling cash in a safe and wise manner

• Reporting suspicious activity if noticed

• Using security systems whenever needed

• Focusing on surroundings while working

• Checking that all machinery, tools, and equipment are safe to use

💡 Bonus tip: For each team, you can ask someone to volunteer and check that safety guidelines are met in every location. For example, you can give them a role as “Security Officer” of team A. This also works well if you can’t afford to train all employees at once.

Checking exit & entry points 

Broken elevators, open reception spaces, and unsecured fire stairwells can help perpetrators a chance to enter and access a workplace, which results in a security risk for your employees. Keeping a regular check on such areas can help identify if there are any vulnerabilities. Intruders may also use doors and windows to rush inside; keep checking them regularly. 

Besides the risk of someone you don’t want entering a location where your employees are working, it’s also important to regularly check entry and exit points in case of a fire, earthquake, unsafe building structures, etc. Your employees should always be aware of how they can leave a location in case their safety is at risk. Even if they’re working in a small house, it’s important to make sure that they can get out fast if anything happens. Teach your employees to perform a quick security check before starting a job to map out the closest doors and windows. 

Others steps

Some other security measures that any business can take are installing CCTV cameras, verified alarms, panic buttons, fire detection, and verified audio intrusion detection to prevent. These are all precautionary steps that you can take that will alert the security system of businesses right away. 

Conclusion

Whichever method of security measure you choose, make sure that your employees are aware of them. Even though you may face more challenges as a maintenance service business because of the many locations, don’t be discouraged. When everyone in the team is on board, all things will run smoothly. It’s important to take as many safety precautions as possible because preventing is always better than dealing with the aftermath. Start by introducing one or two security measures at a time, and see what works well for your business and employees. Then, you can continue to expand and invest in more safety equipment and training as needed.