Security and guarding companies deal with complex environments daily while responding to customer demands and anticipating their needs. In the mining sector, these security and guarding companies must proactively add value for their clients who have become spoilt for choice when it comes to service providers.
Workforce management is one of the key puzzle pieces in this regard as it can improve customer satisfaction, increase and guard employee productivity, help maintain compliance and reduce costs – all critical in a highly competitive environment.
As technology evolves and more sophisticated solutions become available to enhance workforce management, many companies are tempted to implement the ‘latest and greatest’ without considering the impact on the existing environment. This creates the risk of software fragmentation as multiple solutions add to the complexity of maintaining security service level agreements with mines, and negatively impact the effectiveness of guards and monitoring systems.
Mines are asset intensive, as companies live or die by the success of their projects. Supposing a security company is unable to optimise its workforce management to ensure the integrity of the mining environment, then the risk of theft, espionage and other malicious actions can massively disrupt mining operations.
Importance of automation
Incorporating a level of automation in security workforce management solutions can help mitigate against the risk of this happening. For example, field service software with automation capabilities can empower security companies to eliminate manual, error-prone approaches to how dispatchers use information. These automated environments can help create more effective guard schedules while tracking everything from travel time to guard performance.
The sophisticated scheduling system that forms part of the workforce management environment can use known information about guards, shift patterns, business rules and resources to consider a range of relevant parameters to deliver highly valuable, contextualised scheduling information that matches what needs to happen in the field for the security company to operate at maximum efficiency.
Particularly in a fast-paced environment, a resource that adapts in real time and uses GPS tracking to ensure efficiency – such as the time it takes to drive in bad weather to get on site or identifying blind spots in perimeter security – is a real game changer. Additionally, a ‘new’ workforce management approach that is cloud-based provides instant access to the relevant information while still providing for offline redundancy in the event of connectivity dropping in remote locations.
Integrating people
However, it is not just about using innovative technology to improve workforce management for security companies. The most valuable asset, their people, will always remain the driving force behind innovation to find more unique ways of enhancing the security of real estate for mines.
Ultimately, modern workforce management entails integrating people, processes and technology. This will deliver a customisable, flexible and always-available solution based on data analysis and expert guidance to optimise security in a mining environment.
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