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HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passionate about helping other professionals improve how they recruit, select, and manage their people. Most thirty-minute episodes of Good Morning, HR will be eligible for half a recertification credit for both HRCI and SHRM-certified professionals. Mike is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Fort Worth and active with the Texas Association of Business, the Fort Worth Chamber, and Texas SHRM.
It's really important to ensure that your team has communication that makes them feel included, involved, and safe. So the worst is when there's an incident and the management team just decides to say nothing about it. And then you have a bunch of employees just wondering, like, wait. The office is closed. Why did they close?
Anna Redmond:Is it safe to come back to work? Is it not? And then there's a lot of rumor, and often the rumor is worse than what actually happened.
Mike Coffey:Good morning, HR. I'm Mike Coffey, president of Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. And this is the podcast where I talk to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. Please follow rate and review Good Morning HR wherever you get your podcast. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or at good morning hr.com.
Mike Coffey:In the US, employers have a responsibility under the Occupational Safety and Health Act's general duty clause to provide a workplace quote free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm. Certainly, this means workplaces that are designed to minimize risk of injury because of poor design, failure to maintain equipment, or poor training. But another key part of this responsibility is protecting employees from physical threats presented by other people, whether outside actors or even our own employees. Larger employers may have security departments tasked with protecting the company and employees from physical risks, but many organizations don't have a security or even a safety department. And often they don't recognize the need for physical safety and security plans until they're facing a threat or, worse yet, something has already gone wrong.
Mike Coffey:Joining me today to discuss workplace violence prevention and other forms of physical security is Anna Redmond. Anna is the founder of BRAV, a Los Angeles based private security firm providing workplace violence prevention planning, chief security officer services, security assessments, and technologies to manage and improve organizational security. Welcome to Good Morning HR, Anna.
Anna Redmond:Thanks, Mike. I'm so happy to be here.
Mike Coffey:So I wanna get into to brav and physical security concerns and workplace violence prevention. But let's you know, and I definitely wanna get into workplace violence because that's what so much of our audience thinks about when they first think about, you know, physical security. But what other physical security challenges do employers face besides workplace violence?
Anna Redmond:Yeah. That's a great question. And I think it's so high high on the list and it's so often in the news that it's the first thing that comes up. But the truth is that a good security department really takes care of a lot more than that. Often, if there are security guards on the premises, they're the first ones that may respond to things like, oh my gosh, like, a pipe burst and there's water all over the place.
Anna Redmond:Who do we call? They're the ones that figure out things like access control. How do we know who gets into the building and how do we protect the people that are inside? They should be on point for figuring out if there's a special event, what precautions need to be taken in addition to what normally happens. And so it's it's a lot more than just this, boogeyman vision of someone coming in with a weapon.
Anna Redmond:It's all of the different ways that you secure a workplace. So,
Mike Coffey:you know, I spent my career in HR. I'm also you know, I have a private security license here in Texas because, you know, our we are we're an investigations firm. When I'm not doing HR consulting, the other half of our business is is background investigations, and we have to have a PI license for that. So I'm in that space. I don't know many people who came into that space directly.
Mike Coffey:I mean, like, I was an HR guy who ran that ran background checks for a large health care system and then kind of stumbled into this as I have a consulting practice. How did you get into physical security?
Anna Redmond:That's such a great question. And when most people meet me in person, they can do a double take, and they're like, you don't like it. Look like you were a Navy SEAL or a
Mike Coffey:I'm not typecasting
Anna Redmond:you or anything. No. No. No. No.
Anna Redmond:No. I, and and I generally say that is actually absolutely correct. There's there's this notion in, like, startups if you're a nontechnical founder, which means that you don't have a technology background. I like to apply the same version of that to security where I'm a nonsecurity founder. I up until 4 years ago, I knew very little about physical security, and I actually had a personal experience that made me really pay attention to the space and want to build a company in it.
Anna Redmond:Pre this, I built a totally different startup building content creation platforms for fortune 5 100. And one day, I had dropped my kids off at a class, walked across the street, excited to get a cup of coffee and peace at the local Starbucks. And for the re the viewer and the listener context, I live in Los Angeles, which is definitely a city that has struggled with safety over the last couple of years. And sitting in the Starbucks in front of a huge picture window, I saw a man walk out the Starbucks and get into this massive altercation with a sort of tall, scraggly looking, unhoused guy who had just walked by. And it looked like something out of a movie.
Anna Redmond:They were bumping up against the window. Like, this was a real fight. And at one point, drops of blood splattered on the window, and I just my jaw fell open. I didn't know what to do. I was stupefied.
Anna Redmond:And at the end of a couple of minutes, the Starbucks barista who was a, like, very young guy, probably in his, like, early twenties, went out and successfully broke up the fight. And then the next thing he did is he pulled out a spray bottle and a rag and started to clean the blood off of the window. And in all of this time, I my brain was on overload, and I went home that day, picked up my kids, and was like, oh my gosh. And it made me start asking all these questions from the perspective of, you know, the Starbucks, customer, me, but also from the employee side. Like, what just happened?
Anna Redmond:What were the right steps in this situation? What was the security protocol for Starbucks? Should should we have expected the police to respond sooner? And I'll be honest that I couldn't shake all of those thoughts. And as someone who is an entrepreneur sort of it's in my fiber, I did a ton of research.
Anna Redmond:I probably spent about 2 years understanding what exists in the physical security space. How do you get strong physical security resources? What are the needs both on the customer and on the business side? And all of that led to us launching Brav, with the vision of really making physical security easy to understand and easy to implement for midsize businesses that may not have a full time head of security and who need additional resources. Much like, honestly, like, I needed that day.
Anna Redmond:Like, I think that Starbucks needed that day to have someone come in and say, like, what's the protocol? How do we make sure this doesn't happen again? What could we have done to make things safer? So, you know, it's been an exciting journey. I've learned a ton.
Anna Redmond:I am truly in love with this industry, and it's a weird thing to say. But I have met, people who have really impressed me, and they've really impressed me with their drive and desire to be of service to other people. And to be honest, given what we see in the news, that's not necessarily what I expected to find. And so so it's been refreshing and inspiring.
Mike Coffey:You know, I've got friends in the executive protection part of the business. I have friends in the guard space. We've had my friend Jeff McKissick on before. He was back in the episode, like, one of our first 2 dozen episodes easily, about workplace violence training and and and those kind of things. And I've seen so many of our clients' security plans and their policies around it, just the Starbucks kind of situation.
Mike Coffey:And and I I'm I'm hearing ding ding ding. All these little red flags go off. An employee, intervening in a physical altercation outside of the outside of the location and then cleaning it up. There's a biohazard issue here, and he's cleaning up blood. I mean, that's you know, all these things.
Mike Coffey:I'm like, yeah. This is and then you would think and, well, you hear about it. Retail too. Right? People, you know, all these big, you know, grab and goes where people just go in and grab a whole rack of clothes and carry them out out of the the store and just challenge the the locals to, you know, the the what do you call it?
Mike Coffey:The retail employees to chase them down, and they won't you know, they're trained not to. And they're not supposed to lay hands on people or physically chase them down, but they do on occasion. You know, all those policies in that maybe just in the moment you've got those policies when you're not thinking about them because you went through that training 6 months ago, and now you've got the adrenaline of an issue right now. Mhmm.
Anna Redmond:Or maybe you never went through the training. Right? Or maybe it was online and you clicked a bunch of boxes and it didn't really stick. Right?
Mike Coffey:So if you were going when you're going into a client, and I assume the first thing if they don't if they just say, hey. We need to spice up our security. We just know we don't you know, we've had these little incidents, and we need an assessment. What what does that look like? What's the what you know, if a company is gonna, you know, go through the process of doing an assessment of their of their security, what kind of things do they typically look for?
Anna Redmond:Yeah. So so in those cases, we send in one of our one of our fractional heads of security and the folks that we bring on, by the way, to tell you a little bit about their background. The people that fill this role for us have to have had strong leadership experience on both the public and private side. So these are folks who are, like, former chiefs of police, special agents in charge, regional directors of public safety, and then transitioned into private security and led there. So they've seen everything and they have a really good sense of what the landscape looks like.
Anna Redmond:And then depending on the size of the company and how big the physical footprint it has, they would want to understand what the property looks like, what kind of area it's in. Right? So what are the concerns that are external as opposed to coming from within the building? They'd want to understand what policies currently exist and review those policies. Often, we find organizations either have no policy at all or, you know, honestly, an HR person who has no security background wrote it, and so they missed a bunch of things, which is totally fair.
Anna Redmond:Right? Because that's not what they had training in.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. They probably probably Googled it and found a template on the Internet and ran with that. Yeah.
Anna Redmond:Exactly. And we like to do a survey of the employees that will respond to it to understand what their concerns are and what's happened. And we find that that's a really clean way to get a sense for what the concerns are. And sometimes there are things that employees are worried about based on what they see on the news. So we do have a lot of situations where we go in and they're like, you know, we'd like to do, an active shooter training or some active shooter education, not because they're particularly high risk for it, but because people stress about it.
Anna Redmond:And there's, as you know, there's tons of research that being well prepared is the key thing that helps people respond correctly in situations. But sometimes you you find other things like employees will note like, hey. The front desk person's supposed to check IDs and they never do. Or there's a backdoor that people come in through that's supposed to be locked, but it's open. Or, sometimes they'll identify things that are happening internally like I've had managers yell at me and make me feel berated and and bullied and targeted.
Anna Redmond:And then that stuff that we wanna escalate as well because depending on what state you're in and in fact in most states, first of all, those are things that that can end up in a lawsuit. Right? And second of all, those are things that are actually on the pathway to violence and you have to be aware of what they are so that you as an HR person can keep an eye on them. Right? Like, was this someone yelling because they had a bad day and it's a one off thing, or is this a person that's been escalating over time?
Anna Redmond:In which case, it should some it should be something that's on your radar. So so that's the universe that they would start with. And then, of course, as they walk through the building, they look at everything including safety tools. So, are the defibrillators blocked by heavy furniture? Are there fire extinguishers that are where they're supposed to be that are not expired?
Anna Redmond:Is there a first aid kit at the desk of the reception? A lot of folks we've gone into maybe have had a panic button installed 10 years ago, but no one knows how to use it. No one knows if it works. It hasn't been tested, and they don't know if they press it, who comes? Is it the police?
Anna Redmond:Is it a private security company? Have they continued to pay that private security company that's on the other end of that panic button? So there are a bunch of loose threads that are sort of hanging out, and it's really important that someone come in and pressure test those at least once a year.
Mike Coffey:And then that assessment comes back, and let's say we have some policies and they're not very good and there's a a lot of gaps there. And, you know, an organization with 25, 50 employees, 75 employees on-site, they're gonna wanna prioritize you know, there's they're gonna do the cost benefit analysis, basically, and and, you know, say what's the biggest bang for our buck. What do you typically find the 2 or 3 most important things most organizations don't do that they really ought to do that would make a big difference?
Anna Redmond:We counsel our clients to think of it as insurance. Right? Like, you want to be doing it and you wanna hope that it's never useful, but it's valuable for two reasons. Right? It helps prevent actual incidents, and there's a ton of research that if there is an incident, companies that are up to speed and have done their work, their costs are way lower.
Anna Redmond:I think it was something like 500 on average, 500 k on average. If there's any kind of incident and the company did not have good policies in place versus under a 100 k. So the numbers really support having done the prep work in terms of bang for your buck. But additionally, I think it's really important to understand if there's, like, a ground swell of unhappiness that the company is not aware of. And so to that extent, if we survey and there's a small core group of people that's really unhappy about something, you want to know that before it turns into an incident or a lawsuit, and you wanna have a chance to address it.
Anna Redmond:Sometimes it's really easy like, hey, guys. Let's keep the door locked or reminding the front desk admin, like, you really need to be checking IDs. In terms of policy changes, I think the thing that I have seen, most commonly is when policies are good on paper, but they're not fully extended to the whole organization. So an example of that, you know, 10% of workplace violence incidents come from domestic incidents. So that means, you know, one of your employees had some sort of conflict with a current or past x or, like, with an ex or with a current spouse or partner, and then that person shows up at the workplace maybe just by themselves and angry, but, gosh, sometimes with a knife or a gun.
Anna Redmond:Right? And that's really scary, and that's a meaningfully significant portion. What we have seen a lot of is where, let's say, someone files a restraining order against an x, you absolutely need to tell your HR department, and most companies are good about that. But if they bring vendors on-site or partners on-site, they don't extend that questioning. And not too long ago, one of my CSOs dealt with that with one of his clients where a vendor's employee had an ex boyfriend who was very upset and showed up on-site and was not on any sort of lists, and the receptionist just let him sail through.
Anna Redmond:And he had a knife and no one, thankfully was seriously injured, but it was a really scary incident. So it's an example of, you know, having some of the right policies in place, but not making sure that they're ironclad and extent to the whole organization.
Mike Coffey:Well yeah. And along that lines, we see it all the time with companies that have do very good background screening. You know, very, you know, thorough background checks on on their employees, anybody interacting with customers or on-site, except IT goes and hires, an outside contracting firm to do some work, and they've got their people on contract coming in and out and nobody even knows who they are. There's no due diligence. There's, and often your your vendors will say, yeah, we do that.
Mike Coffey:We do background checks. And it's but it's not to your standard. There's not that same standard of care as we called it when I was in health care and then something goes wrong. And that employer for letting that person on you know, that company that let this person on-site is gonna be in the hot water just like the vendor is for letting somebody who does something, you know, whether it's violence or it's just theft of intellectual property or anything else. You know, that's a really good point to that, you know, doing posing your your security guidelines, making sure everybody understands them even when they're vendors or or third parties who are coming on-site.
Mike Coffey:So since we're talking about workplace violence, you know, there's there's those internal threats of somebody that that, you know, that that employee who whose life circumstances have changed or something's gone wrong, their chemistry's gone wrong, whatever. And suddenly, you know, they they react in a physical way against, coworkers. And then there are the external threats like the, you know, the the ex partner or the current partner who's, you know, become unhinged and does it poses a threat to that employee into the whole group. I know California, where you're based, probably has one of the leading workplace violence laws now, in the country as far as employers' responsibilities. What does it cover and, you know, what do you how are you seeing employers respond to it?
Anna Redmond:So we recently in California passed senate bill 553, and it's pretty extensive. We've had we've actually helped a lot of our clients implement it, and it requires that any employer with more than 10 employees, and there are a couple of carve outs for instance if they're all, remote that it doesn't count. But anyone with more than 10 employees needs to go and implement exhaustive training, reporting, and follow-up policies so that employees are able to report workplace violence, have confidence that whoever they're reporting it to is going to investigate it, record it properly, and keep it in a way that OSHA can come and audit it, and then take the appropriate steps as a result, whether that means maybe changing the policies or updating them or taking other steps to keep everyone safe. And it feels like a lot. We've worked with a lot of clients that looked at the law and were like, oh my gosh.
Anna Redmond:This is an enormous amount of work, but also I don't know how to do it. And probably the most common thing that we're called in to help with is, okay. We've created a policy. Maybe we had someone help with it. Maybe we just kind of did it ourselves.
Anna Redmond:Okay. We've created forms for reporting, and maybe we've also put a box by the front desk if someone wants to slip anonymous report in. But once the reports come in, what the heck do we do with the reports? And the challenge is that sometimes reports aren't very clear cut. Right?
Anna Redmond:Like, it's very obvious if someone reports and says, you know, James brought a gun to the office. And in our policy, we clearly have a no weapons policy. But often, it's much more subtle than that. Right? It's like, I was watching these people argue, and I think someone may have been pushed, but I'm not sure.
Anna Redmond:And the person on the receiving end of the report really needs to understand, what the best practice is in terms of forming a plan to respond to that. And then if you decide no response is necessary, you need to have a follow-up plan because you can't just let it go. You need to check-in and make sure, hey. I I thought it was okay. Is it still okay in a month?
Anna Redmond:Is it still okay in 3 months? And when do you get to table that and kind of put it in the archive bin, but still keep it in case something surfaces? So there's a lot of nuance there, and and we've come in. And as part of the training, actually, we do a lot of discussion around, what the pathway to violence is, what to an eye out for, what sorts of things are reportable, and then how to deescalate situations. And we found that all of the groups that we've done that presentation to, the employees are really engaged.
Anna Redmond:And now I can have some trainings you sort of sleep through. This was really interesting, and it applied to areas of my life outside of the workplace. Right? Like, we could all do better at learning how to deescalate tricky situations.
Mike Coffey:You and you mentioned that that pathway to violence, those things to look out for. What are some of those things that y'all have noticed are are particularly high yield? I mean, when we see, you know, this you know, what are the the symptoms that, yeah, this is a a a real red flag that we need to to respond to?
Anna Redmond:So the typical pathway, they have you look at changes in behavior, and it's the change that's really the operative word because sometimes people are temperamental. Like, maybe someone just, you know, their whole life has gotten really annoyed by little things like spilling your coffee or bumping an elbow or something coming in late. That you can look at and be like, well, I don't really have a gut feeling that something's wrong. That's the way that that Stewart or Jane has always been. But the pathway is really about noticing is something changing and is something getting worse.
Anna Redmond:So did someone who used to show up on time, are they suddenly coming in very late? Do they suddenly smell like alcohol? Are they suddenly becoming way more curt with others? Have they started talking about violence in a way that that feels off or threatening or alarming. We'll often have conversations around weapons.
Anna Redmond:Right? Because, this is the US. You know, you're in Texas and people own guns and they're lying to own guns. Right? But there's a difference between saying, oh, you know, that's interesting.
Anna Redmond:There's a new gun manufacturer. Now they let you, you know, make these adjustments to your weapon and personalize it. And they're having a sale tomorrow, and that's interesting versus, you know, I could take out 20 employees with my gut. Right? Like, that that's a scary and extreme version of it, but but that's an example of what to listen for and and obviously that scales back.
Anna Redmond:So, you know, I I think it's it's valuable having that conversation with people, and I think the other piece that's so valuable is depending on what sort of environment you were trained in, your age, your background, the part of the country, Some people may think, well, you know, I can only report it if it's physical. I can only report it if it's really clear. I feel really dumb reporting something that turns out to be nothing. And it's useful having the conversation. And look, If you have a niggling feeling that something is off, why don't you let someone investigate?
Anna Redmond:And if they investigate and they decide that it's nothing, that's fine. That's good faith reporting where you're trying to keep people safe. And that's much better than 2 weeks from then, and this happens with so many workplace shooter incidents where people are like, you know, I had my doubts about him or I was really worried about him for a while. And and, you know, the other end of that spectrum is it's not always workplace shooter. Right?
Anna Redmond:Like, there are a lot of employers dealing with suicides, which is really scary and really sad. And sometimes that gets caught in this reporting too. It's like, hey. Can you step in and help and reach out to someone and connect them to an employee assistance program. So so I think that's that's the value of these sorts of conversations.
Mike Coffey:And let's take a quick break. Good morning. HR is brought to you by Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. 25 years ago, I found it imperative to help risk averse clients make well informed decisions about the people they involve in their business. Because we don't cut corners, our research is more thorough, and our reporting is more robust, our clients make better hiring decisions.
Mike Coffey:However, employers often don't even know what to ask beyond price when evaluating a background screening partner. So we've compiled a short list of 6 questions that you should ask any prospective screening partner, including Imperative, to ensure that you understand what they're really trying to sell you. These questions identify the most common ways background check companies cut corners that impact the quality, accuracy, and depth of the information they provide employers. You can review the 6 questions you should ask of your background check partner at imperativeinfo.com/6. And of course, you can always reach out to Imperative to discuss your background check process through our website at imperativeinfo.com.
Mike Coffey:If you're an HRCI or SHRM certified professional, this episode of Good Morning HR has been pre approved for 1 half hour of recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information, visit good morning hr.com and click on research credits. Then select episode 177 and enter the keyword Redmond. That's red m o n d. And if you're looking for even more recertification credit, check out the webinars page at imperativeinfo.com.
Mike Coffey:And now back to my conversation with Anna Redmond. And then there's the external thread. So we kinda touched on the the, you know, those partners or other folks that maybe there's a restraining order against them, things like that. And and we we we work with agencies that place nannies and domestic staff and high wealth ultrahigh net worth families, things like that. And, you know, the level of their background checks is often better than, you know, most of my corporate clients because they're dealing with family, kids, things like that.
Mike Coffey:And we even check for restraining orders, against that person or that that person has filed against actively against other people. Because if I've if my nanny has a restraining order, has somebody against somebody, against a spouse or a husband or or ex or whatever, I wanna know before I send this, you know, person out with my children in public. Absolutely. But when it comes into you know, when you're in a more business, more corporate area, and somebody says, I've, you know, I've got a restraining order, sometimes those restraining orders are just pro form a. They come with the divorce proceedings and they're, you know, it's, you know, you know, kind of a generic stay away order or whatever.
Mike Coffey:Then there's the real restraining order where where somebody really has real fear for their for for their safety. When somebody brings that to HR or to their supervisor, what ought the conversation look like from the point of view of the company?
Anna Redmond:In general, the most important thing to understand is, you know, give us a sense for what happened, what your concerns are, and anything that this person has said specifically. So and and also, I think it's important to understand who the person is. Right? So if your restraining order is against someone who's, you know, a, judo champion, that's probably like, it's helpful to know that as opposed to if it's just, again, someone with no special skill set and and you had a bunch of conflicts. I think it's also useful to know, if it's a if it's a parenting conflict and maybe you're bringing your kids to work sometimes.
Anna Redmond:Is it a conflict where this person has tried to take your kids and maybe they're restricted from your kids? And and the other thing I think you'd wanna understand as a company is just how long has this been going on? Is it changing at all? Is it becoming better or worse? Sometimes these things escalate around specific proceedings, like, while you're getting a divorce and then they settle down.
Anna Redmond:And then I think it's also important to ask, like, look, what can we as a company, what can we do to support you? Because sometimes the answer can be surprising and sometimes it can be simple. Right? Like, it can be like, hey. I really would like to leave work at 4 o'clock instead of 5 because that way I can leave this area before my ex leaves it.
Anna Redmond:Or it can be, can I work from home for a couple of weeks? Or it can be, gosh. It would be really nice to have someone walk me to my car in the parking garage, or maybe I'd like to change my parking spot and park right by the elevator. So without asking, you don't know there may be adjustments that you can make. But I think just just as a basic thing, workplaces should have access control, and they should know exactly who comes on to the workplace.
Anna Redmond:And there should be someone keeping an eye on it, and there should be a path that's very clear to everyone around what happens if someone tries to get in who's not allowed. And is it you're calling the police? I mean, really, depending on the way that they're trying to get in, you should call the police right away. But is there a backup? Is there a private security company involved?
Anna Redmond:What defense tools are you choosing to keep on-site? Some companies choose to keep pepper spray. Some of them keep whistles. Some of them have the panic button. So so it's just understanding what the plan is and making sure that it's a
Mike Coffey:reasonable plan.
Anna Redmond:And so many organizations you want you can walk into the lobby, demand to
Mike Coffey:see somebody. I mean, I was just at my CPAs last week and you just walk into this nice building. Nobody checks who you are. You walk through the receptionist who is certain you know, typically not somebody who's gonna be able to physically stop somebody from pushing past them or doing something. And, you know, without access controls or without, you know, any, you know, physical barriers to accessing the rest of the work team, you know, those folks are at best, you know, a psychological barrier, a slight you know?
Mike Coffey:But, I I, you know, I've always thought that that layout of of of a reception area is is one of the highest risk things that companies do. I understand why you do. You want, you know, you want it to be relaxed and welcoming. But from a physical security standpoint, that's it seems to lower the barriers to to that kind of, that kind you know, somebody coming on-site with a bad intent.
Anna Redmond:It can be for sure. And and, you know, the other thing that we hear about, which is interesting, is it may not look like physical violence and maybe sort of something that sits on the cusp of physical and cyber. And an example of that is like someone who's nicely dressed and comes into your reception area and is like, you know, I'm handing out free USB sticks. Can I leave these here?
Mike Coffey:Oh, sure.
Anna Redmond:Right? There have been so many hacks that have started like that or, you know, they're really, innocent nice looking guy in a suit who's sitting in your lobby working on his computer for a couple hours. Guess what? He is inside the firewall because he's physically in your space. And so one of the conversations we have is, like, how can we alert everyone if if the front desk receptionist is actually part of a security organization as opposed to a front desk receptionist?
Anna Redmond:How can they be trained to be aware of all of the stuff and look out for it? And that's important too. So I think at the end of the day, you know, your mileage varies depending on the person that you put at the front desk, how you train them, and then what that actual access controls will control looks like. There are buildings where you have to swipe to get into the elevators. Right?
Anna Redmond:And the person at the front desk actually has the key card. And so they have to be, I mean, really dramatically overpowered in a in a significant and highly visible way for someone to take that away from them. And then it's a whole another level of incident, and you're calling the police and getting, public help with that. So so I think, you know, you're totally right. And we've seen people do it so sloppily, and then we've seen it done very well.
Anna Redmond:And I hope that as time goes on, we move a bunch of clients towards that part where they're doing it better and better.
Mike Coffey:And we're almost out of time, but I wanna wrap up with okay. So let's say we've had an incident, and we need to do some sort of, you know, it's worked out however it has and but we need to do some communication to the to our team. You know, we need to just have some, you know, crisis management, you know, communications out there. What are your high point, you know, bullet points about handling those kind of, conversations and and that communication?
Anna Redmond:That's a great question, and we do a lot of crisis management training. And one of our CSOs actually is a nationally recognized expert in that and travels, and helps both police departments and civilian organizations with it. And you're right. It's really critical because it's not just what happens during. It's what happens after.
Anna Redmond:So a couple of the high points, you always need to use any crisis to inform a revision of policy. And that doesn't have to happen the next day, but it should happen very soon after because you need to be able to show that you've learned from it. And if there were gaps that you're working to close those gaps. It's really important to ensure that your team has communication that makes them feel included, involved, and safe. So the worst is when there's an incident and the management team just decides to say nothing about it.
Anna Redmond:And then you have a bunch of employees just wondering, like, wait. The office is closed. Why did they close? Is it safe to come back to work? Is it not?
Anna Redmond:And then there's a lot of rumor, and often the rumor is worse than what actually happened. And people feel nervous and anxious, and that can actually spin off into completely different incidents. So it's really good to have a resource, who can tell you the best practices for how much information to share. It doesn't mean always sharing the names of the people involved because that can be under investigation. That can be a violation of privacy.
Anna Redmond:But at least letting people know, like, hey, x y z happened. This is what we're doing to keep you even safer afterwards. These are the steps we're taking. And then the other part of damage control after incidents is also understanding how you need to follow-up on it. So let's say it was from, someone who came on to the property who's an estranged ex.
Anna Redmond:I think it's important to know, like, are they you know, did they end up with a prison sentence? How long is the duration? Are they still a threat? If they're continuing to be a threat, what steps are going to be taken? If they're currently detained, but you don't know for how long someone needs to be on that.
Anna Redmond:And they need to be following up like, hey. Are they still detained? Are they no longer detained? What's the pathway there? And you need to be taking steps to keep employees safe.
Anna Redmond:And probably if it's a big enough incident, it's helpful to go and do some retraining afterwards, particularly if it was something where there may have been earlier warning signs that weren't quite caught or maybe that were caught but weren't quite reported. And then there's a way to do that that's that's no blame. That's not like, hey. We're saying someone did something wrong, but really coming in to just refresh everyone's memories and making sure that the organization comes back even stronger and even safe.
Mike Coffey:Well, that's a perfect place to end it. Thanks for joining me today, Anna.
Anna Redmond:Thanks so much for having me. This has been a pleasure.
Mike Coffey:And thank you for listening. You can comment on this episode or search our previous episodes at goodmorninghr r.com or on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. And don't forget to follow us wherever you get your podcast. Rob Upchurch is our technical producer, and you can reach him at robmakespods.com. And thank you to Mary Anne Hernandez, Imperator's marketing coordinator who keeps the trains running on time.
Mike Coffey:And I'm Mike Coffey. As always, don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of service to you personally or professionally. I'll see you next week, and until then, be well, do good, and keep your chin up.