Guard Tour System Best Practices

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Model: SO4E, WM5A, UD3E10T

Here are some suggestions based on our twenty-plus years working with security managers. We hope you find them useful.

Define Your Objectives
Your officers may be doing guard tours already — if so, this is a good time to review the risks your facility faces and whether guard tours are providing the protection you need.

What do you need to patrol?
Take a risk management approach to planning guard patrols. Do you need to address problems of theft or vandalism? Protect confidential information? Prevent accidental damage?

Evaluate the risks your facility faces and develop a guard tour plan to address these risks. Determine where your officers need to patrol. If your resources are limited, prioritize to be certain the most important risks are being addressed.

What do you need to document?
One important function of a guard tour system is to provide documentation — for you, your management, or your insurance provider. In the event of an accident or litigation, guard tour reports can serve as proof that your patrols and inspections were performed.

Be sure to include safety inspections in your guard tour planning. Some guard tour systems can document inspections of fire safety and life safety equipment, exit signs, and more.

Plan Your Deployment
Place your checkpoints so that your officers must walk past all of the areas to be patrolled. If the officer is expected to check the roof, place checkpoints at two opposing corners. If the inspection includes a storage room, place the checkpoint at the far end of the room.

If the patrol requires recording an observation or condition, place the checkpoint next to the point to be checked — a door that should be locked, an exit sign that must be lit, and so forth.

Define your incidents so that your reports will provide the information you require.

And remember — more is not always better. Be sure your officers focus on observing and securing your facility rather than on reading checkpoints.

Manage Your Officers
A guard tour system sends a powerful message to your officers — that you care about how patrols are being performed. This alone can improve attitudes, establish accountability, and promote professionalism in your department.

Address Officers' Concerns
Be sure to address the concerns your officers may have upon learning that you will be implementing or reinstating a guard tour system.

How you present the system can make a big difference. A guard tour system is most successful when officers realize it's not big brother and accept it as a tool to help them do their jobs.

Explain the responsibilities of your department and the need for documentation that a guard tour system provides. If the new system reduces officers' paperwork, point that out.

One important point often overlooked is the protection that a guard tour system provides to the officers themselves. In the event of an incident or investigation, the guard tour system can show that an officer did his or her patrols as expected.

Treat your officers as professionals. If you are implementing a professional system like Guard1 Plus, explain that it is part of a program of maintaining professional standards for your security department.

Officer Performance
Of course, a guard tour system is also a tool for assuring officer performance. After implementing a system, many security departments find that it confirms what they had suspected — that some officers are not peforming their patrols. The documentation a guard tour system provides greatly simplifies the task of improving officers' performance and provides support and documentation when disciplinary action is required.

You may find that officers respond to the implementation of a guard tour system with attempted abuse. The solution lies in selecting the proper system in advance. You shold choose a system that can stand up to intentional abuse, and can document attempted abuse such as hard impact or immersion. Guard1 Plus provides a history of abuse events.

Simplify Your Job!
You have enough to worry about. When planning and selecting a guard tour system, be sure to take advantage of features that can make your job easier.

Manage by Exception
At minimum, choose a guard tour system that provides exception reports. Consider an add-on like Rounds Tracker, which can reduce the time required to review guard tours to literally seconds per day.

Automate Report Distribution
Why run reports when they can be run for you? Invest in a system that can send reports to your e-mail inbox.