It is no surprise that many businesses (and homeowners) employ a security firm to keep their premises or home safe. These companies offer peace of mind, providing a variety of services, ranging from guards that stay on the premises 24hrs a day, to mobile patrols that respond when any alarms, including fire alarms, are triggered.
But did you know that in many instances, the company you pay to provide your security, is not the one that actually provides the men and women who protect your business. This is because in many cases, one security firm will subcontract the work to another firm. This often being the case for the big national firms as they simply don’t have the necessary local presence, it being impossible to provide emergency response cover when you don’t have an office within a few miles.
Any professional security company will use uniformed staff, so it is easy to see what company they come from, but in some cases, as they are on the premises when you are not, you can never check.
For example, a firm providing an open-up and lock-up service, as Wye Security does, could well mean that they are there before any of the management team members show up and again after they leave. Thus, you never get to see the insignia on their uniforms.
The same can be said for the alarm response teams, or the mobile patrols that visit your premises in the middle of the night. Again, you will have no opportunity to see who they really come from.
This may seem to be an unimportant point, but surely, when it comes to the area of security honesty is a crucial element?
This is what we at Wye believe anyway, as we rarely sub contract in any case, and when we do, we are always sure to tell our customers who will be providing that particular service.
When sub contracting is acceptable
Sub contracting is not always unacceptable, it all depends on the company doing the referring and the actual security company providing the service involved.
In Wye’s case, we do accept sub contracting work from other security companies, but only when they are also ACS accredited and ensure us that the customer will be informed that Wye is carrying out the work.
It is also important to state that sometimes customers are not bothered about any sub contracting, what they want is one point of contact, someone that they can trust is managing their security.
But who is monitoring what the sub contractor is doing?
Businesses of all types use subcontractors for one thing or another, it making it possible for a firm to offer services that it simply could not before. This is fine in most instances, the company providing the service keeping a close eye on the level of service the sub contractor supplies to ‘their’ customer.
In most cases, this is not a problem the sub contractors work being seen on a day-to-day basis, and in many instances, even being subject to approval before the job can be said to have been completed.
But when it comes to security, it is highly unlikely that anyone is on the ground checking on the level of service being provided by any subcontractor. True, they have to report on their actions by radio or via an App of some sort, but this is the same thing and does not provide the same level of monitoring as is the case with direct employees.
So, can any business really rely on the service provided by a security service provided by a sub contractor? At Wye we don’t think so, which is why we rarely ever use one.
But besides the honesty and monitoring factors, there is also the issue of cost.
It will come as no surprise to any business owner reading this article, when I say that the main service provider is going to charge more to the customer than they pay to the subcontractor, after all, businesses are there to make a profit.
This is all well and good, and to be expected. But it can go too far, the customer, in the end paying far more to a big national company than they would to the local firm which is actually providing the security service in question.
In some instances we have heard of a job being sub contracted three or four times, from one company to another. This is actually against the rules of SIA, only one level of sub contracting being allowed. Besides this breach of the rules (which are there for a reason of course) there is the matter of increased costs, as each time the job is subcontracted profit will be taken by the referring firm.
The actual level of service that is being provided
The final issue is perhaps the most important. The issue of monitoring was mentioned above, but there is another level to be considered. For example the report made by the ‘man on the ground’ when they check a premises when an alarm was triggered.
When you use a local company like Wye Security, you can be sure that the guards always report on what they find or do directly to our control centre, the information being logged and made available to the end customer.
While it is true that all sub contracting security guards report to a control centre, there is a difference to the procedure and the data reaching the customer.
When a company like Wye is providing the service, the security guard reports direct to the companies control centre. But when it comes to sub contractors, they normally report to the control centre of the national company in question. This is where things can break down to some degree, as the actual words and report made are often changed in some way, this modified text being placed in the control centre documentation. It is this, potentially altered report that the customer would receive.
At Wye, we believe that any alteration to the Guards report could potentially cause issues, which is why we record all the reports verbatum.
I hope that this article has proved interesting and that perhaps when you next choose the security firm who is to protect your home or business, you will know a bit more about what goes on and can ask the critical question as to ‘who exactly will be providing the services you have ordered’.