Page 18
— Property Management Quarterly — July 2016
F
ollowing horrific events such
as the shootings in Orlando;
San Bernardino, California;
Sandy Hook Elementary in
Connecticut; and Columbine
High School in Colorado, we natu-
rally question the safety of our sur-
roundings. We find ourselves asking
if our workplace is at risk of a terror
situation and in what areas are we
vulnerable. Property managers must
ask if their employees and tenants
feel safe and if they are prepared if
something happens. It also is impor-
tant to consider how the company
will be affected if targeted.
These questions lead us to exam-
ine our security program, consider-
ing who came up with it, when it
was last evaluated, does it work and
is it maintained. When considering
an active shooter threat, manag-
ers must wonder how the officers
will respond, are they in the right
place at the right time, and are they
properly trained and screened. And
finally, managers must consider if
their employees know what to do
in an incident. Although times have
changed in the past 20 years, the
security program at many work-
places has not – it’s still the way it’s
always been.
These are the concerns your cor-
porate security department is work-
ing to mitigate. A corporate team of
Certified Protection Professionals,
Physical Security Professionals and
those with criminal justice degrees
can create programs and processes
for your employees, conduct train-
ings for security officers, hold ses-
sions on awareness, and create
workflows to streamline a response
in the event the
unthinkable hap-
pens.
There’s only one
problem with what
you just read. Most
companies in the
U.S. don’t have a
corporate security
department. Small-
to medium-size
businesses (those
with less than
1,000 employees)
represent 99.7 per-
cent of all employ-
ers, and employ
half of all private-sector workers
and 39 percent of high-tech employ-
ees. There are roughly 130 million
U.S. workers employed by small-
and medium-size businesses.
Unlike large global corporations
with sprawling headquarter cam-
puses, these small- and medium-
size businesses lease space in
downtown high-rises, suburban
business parks and in warehouses
surrounding metropolitan areas
where employees are abundant. As a
commercial real estate manager, you
may be the landlord to a call center,
a software company, a bank, a politi-
cal campaign, an accountant, a day
care center, a restaurant chain and a
psychiatric specialist all in the same
building. Each of these businesses
and their employees are relying on
you to protect them.
How do you determine the level of
security necessary when your work-
place population is a melting pot
and you don’t have corporate secu-
rity expertise to lean on? A good
place to start is consulting research
on average security expenditures
and efficient ways to disseminate a
corporate security budget.
The chart is a snapshot of how
much various industries spend on
private security per employee, taken
from a private security industry
report compiled by the National
Criminal Justice Reference Service.
Let’s take the case of real estate
and property management, the sec-
ond to lowest on the list at $450 per
employee. In a 16-story high-rise
with 625,000 total square feet and
an average of 190 sf per occupant,
the property may have a population
of 2,900 people at 90 percent occu-
pancy. According to the research, the
annual security expenditures at this
property would average $1.3 million.
How does this number compare to
what is right for your workplace? In
every company, and at every prop-
erty, there will be external and inter-
nal conditions that drive the threats,
risks and, ultimately, the level of
protection needed to mitigate the
potential for a major event. In the
case of this high-rise, the corporate
security department would take
the following steps to ensure a safe
workplace:
1. Threat, vulnerability and risk
assessments.
These assessments are
used to identify areas of weakness
and evaluate surrounding environ-
mental threats, economic risks and
workplace population threats. These
assessments are critical to creating
an effective security program.
2. Security program development
and consulting.
The creation of a cul-
turally and environmentally sound
Management
Steve Lisle
Vice president,
global sales and
marketing, Apollo
International,
Denver
National Criminal Justice Reference Service
A snapshot of how much various industries spend on private security per employee
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