How secure are your premises? Do you trust your employees with sensitive information? What measures can you take to improve workplace security? Why is security important in the workplace?

If you own a growing or successful business, maintaining a secure workplace is integral to your continued operations. A security breach could lead to safety concerns or even cost your business thousands of dollars. Businesses are often targeted by thieves and hackers attempting to access customer, financial, and other records. Increasing or tightening your business’s security is imperative for ensuring you avoid costly mistakes.

Here are five easy tips you can follow to prevent a security breach in your workplace.

1. Reduce Access to Your Building(s)
2. Provide Employee Identification
3. Train Your Staff
4. Foster a Workplace Culture
5. Secure Sensitive Documents

#1: Reduce Access to Your Building(s)

Minimize access and mark areas to prevent unauthorized entry. If you allow guests to visit your workplace, make sure they are clear on where they are and are not allowed to go.

The more people who have access to your building and its contents, the harder it is to maintain security.

Many office spaces handle sensitive information. Whether it’s financial documentation or customer information, you need to ensure that only authorized personnel have access. Post signs or electronic security access points for server or filing rooms.

Your office most likely has guests from time to time. Whether they’re investors, interviewees or customers, people who are not employees may visit your workplace. You need to watch after visitors and ensure they don’t enter off-limit areas. Have a member of your administration, or other upper level staff member, stay with guests. This is an easy method of keeping private areas secure.

But, maintaining tight access isn’t limited to guests.

Your employees should also recognize and follow restricted area policies. Not every member of your staff needs access to every room. This is especially so if you own a larger company; the more employees, the more difficult it is to track them.

How can you prevent unauthorized employee access?

Limit employee access by marking restricted rooms. You can give keys to authorized workers to ensure only they have access to rooms or safes. If your business can afford it, you can install electronic scanners tied to specific QR code badges. Another electronic method of limiting access is providing programmable keypads with alpha-numerical codes to designated staff members.

Ensuring access to your building and certain areas is a huge element of reducing the chances of a security breach.

#2: Provide Identification

Name tags and badges are excellent for identifying authorized personnel and guests.

Supply your staff with photo ID badges for quick and easy confirmation. You can design badges to your specifications making them harder to copy. Ensure your staff then follow all policies on keeping their ID on their person while on premises.

If you have an electronic access system, you can increase security with ID badges. This leads back to restricting access on your property, but you can find or make badges with bar or QR codes for your system. Combining an employee photo with a unique code makes it harder for thieves to copy the design, which prevents unauthorized entry to sensitive information.

Clip-on or lanyard badges are pretty standard for many businesses from retail to hospitals. Magnetic or pin back name tags are common too.

If you allow visitors, provide them with guest passes or badges. While it is still a best practice to have an administrative member accompany guests, providing visitor passes gives other employees peace of mind. It also ensures easy identification of unwelcome guests or trespassers.

Sometimes it’s not reasonable for a member of staff to follow guests. Visitor badges make it easier for employees to identify authorized guests with a quick glance.

Identification badges allow easy tracking of authorized personnel and have a wide variety of uses. No matter your sector or business, your workplace will benefit if you provide clear and easy-to-read badges or name tags.

#3:Train Your Staff

Training feels obvious, but it is integral to your security. You must educate your employees on proper security measures and policies.

Where and how do you file customer information? Does your location have restricted areas? What is proper procedure for a security breach?

If your staff isn’t trained, then how can they follow security procedures?

They can’t.

Training encourages a safe and secure environment.

You should ensure your training programs address every aspect of an employee’s duties. This doesn’t mean they need to know how to do everything. If they handle customer records, they need to understand how to maintain discretion. If they deal with finances, they need to know when and how to file their documents.

Ensure your programs are comprehensive. If an employee hesitates or doubts how to follow a security procedure, risk of breach is high.

Training also gives administrative staff a chance to further vet employees.

If an employee breaks procedure multiple times, you should provide further education, or potentially terminate the employee. This is especially so for sensitive documents. Anyone who handles, transports, files, or fills customer or classified company information must understand and follow proper procedures.

Your training regimen could include online courses, in-person presentations, on-the-job and hands-on experience. Find the best ways of presenting your information.

Investing time and money into educating and training your staff ensures your security measures don’t fail.

#4: Foster a Positive Workplace Culture

All the training in the world won’t help if your employees don’t care about your company.

If your staff wants to do their best for the business, your security measures benefit. In contrast, if they don’t enjoy their work or feel underappreciated, mistakes happen and they are likely to ignore policies.

Every business benefits from building a better workplace culture. Employees are more motivated and will want to encourage or enforce security policies. If they enjoy working for you, they’ll want to do everything they can to follow proper procedures.

Unhappy employees don’t care about your business. They don’t care to follow policies. They don’t care to fulfill the full extent of their work duties. And, they don’t care about the security of the business as a whole.

Remedy this by acknowledging recurring complaints and other reasons for the lack of motivation.

Part of this is encouraging personal growth and appreciating their work. Your employees are people, so they need to know the importance of their job.

If everyone in your company enjoys at least some aspect of their work, your security will improve. Happy and motivated employees want what’s best for your business. They perform better and follow established security guidelines and policies to ensure safe operation of the company.

You can build your company’s culture through team activities, company lunches, or by acknowledging the work of your employees.

There are many ways to improve workplace positivity and culture. Find and explore the best options that fit your business and staff.

#5: Secure Sensitive Documents

It seems obvious to secure important documents, but it should be addressed. Store sensitive documents in secure areas!

If you handle customer information of any kind, keep it classified. Privacy breaches can cost your business thousands if not millions of dollars in damages paid to individuals. Limiting access to this kind of information is integral for increasing security.

Only allow certain staff members access to these documents. Give them physical keys, bar code badges, or key codes, whatever your business has the budget for and access to. Storing documents in locked filing cabinets in a locked room is an easy, low-tech way of securing information.

The same goes for your company records.

Employee information, financial records, and other documents need to be treated with the same care. Store them separate from each other to avoid confusion and potential filing errors.

Digital files are a bit trickier with the constant improvement of technology.

Ensure your servers are secure and encrypt all files. Limit access to programs and server rooms to proper staff. Digital information is easy to copy onto a flash drive, unlike physical records. Implementing as many security measures as possible lessens the chances of a breach.

An accidental or deliberate entry to your stored files could mean a potential and costly security incident.

Disposal of sensitive records needs consideration. Shredding physical files is one of the most popular methods. It’s fast and easy, and if you run a smaller business, you likely don’t have hundred or thousands of documents to dispose of. To further ensure secure disposal, completely black-out private information, on the front and back, with a security marker.

If your business handles thousands of invoices or customer records, find a local shredding company. Many of them can either pick up your documents or can leave a locked box for you to deposit physical records for them to retrieve and dispose of monthly.

Name Tag Wizard is your one-stop-shop of custom identification products for businesses. Increase your company’s security with customized name tags and badges to keep track of authorized staff and guests.