We intend to return to critical communications in the December 2020 print edition of Professional Security magazine, having last explored it in the March edition.
As the long-running debate over a coronavirus ‘track and trace’ app for the UK shows, communications – giving information in good time to others – is basic to a well-functioning society.
The occasion then was an annual Business Continuity Institute (BCI) survey of emergency comms. It found according to its members’ replies that email is the most usual method of sending emergency communications, whether to your own employees or to customers or the media outside. Yet; what if, as respondents to the pre-pandemic study told the BCI, the two most common triggers of such comms is extreme weather (which may bring down networks?) or IT or telecoms outages (when presumably your IT is down?!).
Sarah Cotterill, Global head of Business Continuity Management at Computacenter UK, is speaking at the BCI’s two-day online conference on November 6, about how she brought in an incident management communication process at the firm, in 2018. She says that it’s proving its worth; having been used ‘in anger’ on several occasions.
In our October edition, we feature body-worn cameras, as offered by the Co-operative and other retailers to non-security and security front-line staff, to deter anti-social behaviour and even assault, when staff face common triggers of ASB and verbal or physical abuse, such as challenging shop theft suspects or denying cigarette or alcohol sales to the under-age. Jayne Crowe, Investigations and Security Manager, Co-operative Group, is among the speakers at the virtual Lone Worker Safety Live conference, on Tuesday afternoon, October 13; about the high street retailer’s approach to lone working. The free to attend event is organised and opened by Nicole Vazquez, of Worthwhile Training. Visit www.loneworkersafetylive.com.
What if either a lone worker – who can be defined as someone on their own in a workplace, even if others are on the site – or an entire site needs to report an incident, whether man-made (a robbery, violence, even an act of terror) or an act of nature, such as a fire or flood. Trainers and consultants in the field have stressed an employer’s ‘duty of care’ to employees, and how health and safety, and personal security, overlap – as staff will want to alert managers to an incident that they cannot handle by themselves, or that poses a risk to themselves and others (colleagues and customers), whether a spilt package in a retail aisle, or a shop theft.
