Your local business property is at risk for a variety of crimes including employee theft, vandalism, and shoplifting. To protect your business from such crimes you should always have commercial crime insurance, but what if there was a way to prevent the crimes before they occur? You might not be able to prevent every crime, but many can be prevented with the following premises strategies. Follow these tips and you will be offering your business premises the best chance possible against these types of crimes.
Identifying Potential Theft
Take a tour of your business property is consider what is likely to be stolen or vandalism. Which of your property is going to be the main target? This might be a safe, expensive merchandise that can be re-sold for a large profit, cash and valuable items, small items that are easy to steal, confidential paperwork and materials, equipment, machines and vehicles, and any kind of electronics. These items are the most commonly stolen items from any business and ones you should focus on protecting.
Secure your Premises
You will first want to secure your business premises, focusing on the targets you identified previously. This includes protecting the interior and exterior sections of your building. Interior includes having high quality locks, tamper-proofing locks on all windows, documenting all your valuables, maintaining the documentation at another location, and keeping the interior well lit during all times.
The exterior should be protected by having materials that can’t be damaged as easily, such as sturdy windows and steel doors, and having the outdoors well lit and clean. If you’re able to, put a lockable fence around your premises that is tall enough to discourage climbers. Never leave ladders, valuables, or flammable materials on the exterior of your building. Make sure all structures are sturdy and strong and that the rooftop can’t be accessed easily, such as from nearby trees. Open up your landscaping so criminals don’t have places to hide.
Monitoring Business Premises
Aside from these extra steps to protect the interior and exterior of your building, you should also have a monitoring system for all your property. Inspect the property on a regular basis to ensure its safety and protection, have smoke detectors and fire alarms installed, and make it obvious that you have alarms. Many criminals will be discouraged if you make it known that you have an advanced security system and surveillance cameras in your building. You should also have a video monitoring system to discourage criminals and be able to help police identify them if they do get into your building.
Limiting Building Access
Another security precaution you can make to prevent certain crimes is by limiting the access to your building. Have a key card system set up where only authorized personnel with key cards can access the building. You can also program key cards to only work during business hours so employees or someone else who gets their hands on the key cards are unable to enter the building after hours. Make signs visible to outsiders that you have a strong security system and only authorized persons will be allowed in the building. Furthermore, you can hire security guards to keep a close eye on your property during the day and at night when most crimes would occur.
Be sure to have proper security, but don’t forget about small business insurance. Crimes can occur even when you have an excellent premises strategy implemented to prevent crimes, so you should also have crime business insurance for protection.
