The third in our series of blogs looks further into the challenges of performance management and service delivery for an SIA approved contractor. We look at how Workforce management software can help record and report on officer attendance and performance to meet service level targets and deliver customer satisfaction.
Working our way through the ACS guide, it’s clear that a key factor in managing service delivery is about people management. Ensuring that they have the right qualifications, health and safety training and any required professional accreditations, as well as ensuring they are in the right place at the right time, is critical to service planning and delivery.
Meeting HR compliance standards
A company delivering security services to a customer has full responsibility for the induction, training and monitoring of both performance and welfare of all its officers, including any occasional workers, all of which can require significant administration. Section 2.4.1 of the ACS guide refers to these factors specifically: ‘the use of subcontractors must be subject to defined quality assurance procedures’.
Using Workforce management software can help companies manage these tasks and the associated costly compliance, audit and risk requirements. All regulatory and legal employee details can be recorded electronically prior to onboarding and throughout a contract period and can be easily accessed by your authorised staff. These may include details such as 10-year working history, DBS checks, right to work or GDPR.
It enables you to follow a consistent and approved process and undertake thorough background checks to meet HR regulations and contractual needs for new and existing clients. You can also automate processes to keep employees aware of any health and safety risks, as well as ensuring their signature on appropriate documentation to verify that required training has been completed. Storing all identification documents electronically means no need to store paper copies of certificates and they are easily accessible.
Visibility of operations keeps service level agreements on track
Once you have specified the services that you are providing in your contract, it’s important to detail how this is going to be achieved. This may include staffing levels, use of CCTV and/or response within key parameters, such as staff detecting/attending an incident or intrusion and responding within a certain time.
Managing performance is critical throughout to ensure that the service delivered is as specified, with measures in place both to monitor daily duties and KPIs for the entire operations. Again, this is outlined in the guide which states that: ‘Effective customer and consumer performance indicators and service level agreements have been established’ (criteria 2.4.2).
Workforce management software can give the control room complete visibility of the operation as the service unfolds. This includes highlighting duties that are not filled, communicating responses to incidents on site with reporting of status clearly displayed on dashboards.
Dashboards can be updated in real-time with flags highlighting exceptions when escalation or intervention is required. Tracking and monitoring activity and response times in this way helps to keep a close eye on activity and services to ensure you meet your agreed SLAs.
An example of how Kestrel Guards achieved this for the Tate St Ives can be found here case study.
Incident management for a proactive customer service
The ACS guide criteria also covers how the organisation handles things that happen outside of the day-to-day activities of customer contracts (Defining incident procedures 2.4.3). In this instance staff need to be clear on how, and what incidents, should be escalated.
Workforce management software can assist by automating incident reporting, making it easy for officers to report and take photos on site to show potential security risks, perhaps damage to doors, broken windows or fencing. These can be flagged to the customer immediately, enabling them to take prompt action, thus avoiding potential break-ins and breach of insurance cover.
With full visibility of where security officers are at all times, alerts can flag a no-show and officers can be quickly despatched, ensuring that the customer site is covered and any inspections carried out. This ensures that an organisation has ‘Effective procedures to ensure the attendance of staff on customer sites’ (2.4.5).
Comprehensive reports maintain quality standards
While your operations may have excellent procedures in place, it is important to regularly review them to ensure that they continue to meet the requirements and quality standards that have been agreed. Again, this falls within the scope of performance management of both the officers and the services provided.
The reporting functionality with Workforce management systems can provide detailed electronic records of attendance, inspections and incidents, making performance management and reviews easy. The reports provide customers with quantitative reports of site checks, alarm call outs, response times, all supported with relevant documentation and photos where required. Customers can see clearly what services have been delivered and where they meet the agreed SLAs.
The reports can also highlight to the customer where the contract may need to be reviewed. For example, more robust security measures may be recommended with more frequent patrols or regular photo updates to avoid theft of stock. Having the quantitative reports created from captured data makes it easier to have this conversation with a customer, rather than a discussion based on general observations of officer attendance.
If you are currently working towards the SIA Approved Contractor Scheme, why not give us a call and
find out how SmartTask could help your business.