When is the right time to outsource your security?

Hundreds of businesses across the country of all shapes and sizes fall victim to crime every year and these incidents come at a cost to the business. You may have great insurance, but if important assets are stolen or damaged a criminal event can result in serious downtime and in any business, time is money. This is before we even mention the potential emotional damage it could inflict on your employees and the negative blow to your company’s reputation.

You might have reached a point in the lifecycle of your business where your own in-house security simply isn’t enough and you feel the right call would be to call in an external security company to take care of your needs. Or maybe you feel that an in-house solution might prove too tying and too costly?

Of course, with serious advances being made in the field of smart security solutions and cloud computing, it is arguable if a physical presence is even required by some smaller and medium-sized businesses. There are, however, still definite advantages to a physical security force and specific advantages to outsourcing security.

Flexibility

Working with a third-party means you are not employing them directly and don’t need to retain their services. If you have hired in-house security guards, for example, you’ll need to take into account holidays, shift patterns and potential sick days.

You’ll also need to work to more rigid employment rules if they are a member of your staff, which includes providing training and equipment. You’ll also be accountable for them, which might have an impact on your insurance.

A third-party security solution, however, offers not only a greater variety when it comes to choice  (extra perimeter alarms etc.) but allows you to scale up or down operations on the fly as and when required. You can also hire more security in seasons or specific situations where more is required and less when the risk is not so high.

Cost

Having guards employed to protect your premises at all times is a costly endeavour but by working with an external company you can put together a flexible package that works with your requirements.

It’s also important to consider the cost of actually finding in-house security in the first place, not to mention the cost of training. Also, if you offer a contract to someone (or even a whole team) and for whatever reason, it isn’t a good fit then it can be an incredibly costly process to get rid of them. Not so, with outsourced security, where if you are unhappy with one team, you can simply have them replaced.

Ultimately, technology can be a great deterrent to criminals and has introduced several options in recent years that have made security that much easier to organise and maintain.

However, technology alone will never be enough to stop a criminal. What good is having a high-def security camera installed if it’s just going to capture footage of your thieves gleefully escaping into the night?

All successful security solutions require human beings to make the final call and provide that last line of defence and if hiring a security team in-house seems like a step too far then outsourcing is the ideal compromise.