It’s one thing to have security guards on-site and conducting a patrol. It’s quite another to ensure that your security staff is able to provide effective reporting that communicates valuable information to your management team and your clients.
So how can you ensure that effective security officer incident report is taking place? There are a few key features in modern security guard reporting tools that are well worth your attention. By implementing the right set of features in your team’s reporting system, you’ll be able to get complete, actionable reports from every shift.
The following features of modern reporting tools can make it much easier to achieve effective report writing for the security officer:
Report Templates
While some clients may be tempted to think that incident reports are the only kind of paperwork your security staff is responsible for, this is far from the truth. Depending on the duties associated with your guard’s patrol shift, they may also be responsible for visitor logs, vehicle inspections, disciplinary reports, and more. Are you making it easy for your guards to supply the necessary information for these different reports?
Modern reporting tools make it easier than ever to ensure that your guards know what information needs to be included with unique templates for different types of reports. Even more importantly, these report templates are easy to read, ensuring that your management staff and clients will have no difficulty analyzing essential information.
Mandatory Information Fields
Incomplete reports are a common problem for a lot of security guard companies. It doesn’t matter how good of a reporting template you have in place; if your guards fail to include all the necessary information, it will be much more difficult to analyze and report data. Worse yet, this can also reflect poorly on your company when trying to illustrate your value to your clients.
Digital reporting tools help you overcome this common problem by allowing you to designate certain information fields as mandatory. If a guard fails to fill out a mandatory portion of the form, he won’t be allowed to submit it. This ensures that the most important pieces of information are never left out from a report. This safeguard can dramatically increase your ability to guarantee effective report writing for the security officer.
Mobile Digital Reporting
There’s no denying that paper reporting systems can be horribly inefficient. Not only is it easier to misplace reports altogether, it can also be more difficult to gather desired information from reports or even get everything submitted on time.
Modern security guard reporting software allows you to avoid all these problems through device reporting functionality. This useful tool can integrate with Android and iOS devices, ensuring that all report submissions are completed, sent, and received digitally. By eliminating physical paperwork, it becomes easier for your guards to submit their reports in the first place. Better yet, it will make it easier for your back office staff to stay organized with improved analytics and search capabilities.
Photo Uploads
The old saying “a picture’s worth a thousand words” is especially relevant for security guard reporting. The ability to upload photos as part of a security report can lead to drastically improved results and make it easier to get the right information to the right people.
For example, let’s say a security guard discovers a water leak while on patrol. By uploading a photo of the leak in addition to a written description of the issue, it becomes much easier for the office staff or client to determine the full extent of the problem and provide additional instructions that will allow for a quick resolution.
By enabling photo uploads via a mobile device, modern reporting software makes it significantly easier for your guards to report vital information in a way that paper reporting could never accomplish.
It is clear that today’s incident report platforms provide more useful tools than ever to help the security officers create quality reports for their company. See for yourself how TrackTik’s incident report module can help you improve your security operations today.
