Principles

A Secured Environments organisation and its leadership are committed to a secure environment

Working in insecure environments has serious consequences for employees and the organisation itself. It can be the cause of low staff morale, and high staff absence and turnover. For staff it can result in physical injury or psychological distress. This can represent a real financial cost to the organisation, as well as affect the confidence of a business, its profitability and even its viability. Costs can also arise from expensive insurance premiums and compensation payments. These are in addition to costs that can arise directly from crimes that are preventable, such as burglary or vandalism or anti social behaviour. Therefore it is essential for organisations to strive to create a secure working environment.

This principle asks you to demonstrate how committed the organisation is to creating a secure environment. To achieve this you need to be able to show that high level commitment exists. Managers need to show that they have taken steps to help to create a safe and secure working environment and staff need to believe that the organisation is committed to creating a secure environment.

A Secured Environments organisation understands the security risks it faces

In order to ensure that an organisation is secure, the risks it is exposed to need to be understood. To demonstrate this senior managers need to be able to describe the risks posed to the organisation and explain how the risks and incidents are recorded, monitored and analysed. Senior managers should also be able to explain how the information collected is used to create a secure working environment.

Managers need to be able to explain the risks they face, and how incidents are recorded and monitored.

Employees should be able to explain what they need to do to report an incident and provide examples of when they have done this.

A Secured Environments organisation develops an effective response to reduce the risks to the organisation

Crime prevention measures are only effective if they are targeted correctly and are based on evidence; here organisations need to demonstrate that they have done this. There should be crime prevention and security measures in place that are appropriate to the organisation based on an analysis of the risks. The designated person should be able to explain why the measures have been chosen and how they address the problems experienced.

Employees should be able to explain their role in creating and maintaining a safe and secure environment. All staff should also be able to provide examples of ways in which the organisation has improved in its response to and management of security.

In a Secured Environments organisation security is managed

In order to create a secure environment the organisation needs to have a plan in place to achieve its aims and objectives. All security measures should be proactively managed, this means that security measures should be planned.

Security measures can be expensive and it is important to track these costs to enable effective budgeting. You need to show that you know what resources (e.g. people, time, money and technology) are used within the organisation to create a secure environment and that this is an efficient use of available resources.

A Secured Environments organisation effectively implements security

Many crime prevention measures fail due to poor implementation, you need to demonstrate that you have appropriate processes and procedures in place to ensure that crime prevention initiatives are implemented correctly and provide examples of this. New security measures need to be introduced using project management principles.

The nominated lead from the senior management team needs to have a good understanding of the measures that are being taken to address the organisation’s crime and disorder problems. The organisation should also be working with other relevant agencies, for example the police, neighbours, etc. to improve security and reduce crime and anti social behaviour.

The role of the employee is fundamental to ensuring a secure environment. All employees need to be able to explain their role in achieving and maintaining a secure environment.

In a Secured Environments organisation all crime prevention initiatives are monitored, evaluated and fed back to the organisation’s leadership

It is essential that crime prevention initiatives and security measures are assessed to determine whether they are effective. This may occur in a number of ways, for example through testing existing security measures and processes, auditing of systems and evaluation. Your organisation may use one or all of these methods depending on the size of the company and its security risks. But whatever method you use you need to be able to explain how security measures and crime prevention methods are monitored and evaluated and how the findings are fed back into the strategy. You need to be able to explain how a crime prevention initiative or security measure has been improved based on the findings from an evaluation.