Elf & Safety in your Home and Office
Safety tips for home
Safety tips for Office
Christmas is a wonderful time of year, it is a time to see family & friends. However, Christmas is also a potentially dangerous time of year with opportunistic criminals looking to take advantage of people’s high spirits during the Christmas period, with this in mind we have prepared some tips to keep both your home and office safe over this Christmas period.
Keeping your Business safe over Christmas
23% of incidents were recorded on Christmas Day itself, making it the busiest day of the month closely followed by Boxing Day. Between the hours of 2-6am tended to be the busiest times on these two days for attempted intrusions. Premises targeted include offices, retail outlets, warehouses and car showrooms. Criminals know that there’s increased chance premises will being empty from 24th Dec definitely until 27th, and some until 2nd Jan.
- Establish lock up procedure: A little bit of planning and communication before the busy season will help ensure security whilst out of the office. If you are using a monitoring service like VRC make them aware of your closing times.
- Avoid lone workers – Even in the busiest offices, there is often one person left to lock up for the Christmas holidays. This person will be vulnerable to criminals in waiting, or to missing security procedures in the rushed atmosphere of the festivities. In the ideal situation, there would never be someone left alone to lock up, try to arrange this in advance of the last day. Or use a Keyholding service such as ARK which can secure your building with their open and lock service.
- Be aware of everyone entering and exiting your premises: Christmas is a busy time for deliveries and having extra delivery people accessing your business is not unusual. Installing an access control system, an Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to track licence plates or monitoring the perimeter of your premises can alleviate this threat, keeping your staff and assets safe.
- Confirm keyholder contact details are up-to-date: As well as confirming who will be available over the holiday period. Don’t just assume people will have their phones on and be contactable – ensure everyone involved is clear on when they are expected to be contactable.
- Keep perimeter well-lit with appropriate lighting: Keep building well lit with floodlights, in place to deter unauthorised activity and ensure clear visuals of would-be intruders. This makes it difficult for criminals to stake out your premises and should lead to recognisable images for the authorities to use.
- Display signage in an obvious place: If you have a security service active on your site, ensure you have clear signage highlighting this fact. This acts as a great deterrent to intruders, who will weigh up the chances of being apprehended by a good security service.
- Ensure all electrical appliances are in safe mode: With premises closed up, and little or no staff attending, there is always a fear of fire or flood damage. It is a good idea to keep the heat coming on for a few hours each day to avoid pipes becoming damaged.
Keeping your Home safe over Christmas
Christmas time Home Safety DO’S
- Be careful with wrapping paper: Wrapping paper should be placed in sealed garbage bags, reducing any colourful attraction to your bin.
- No Visible Packaging: Take the time to cut and flatten boxes up so they fit in your recycle bins. Take any extra-large packaging from bikes, TVs and any electronics to the dump, don’t place on your curb and definitely not in your bin.
- Going out? If you plan to go away after Christmas Day, make sure all the presents are packed away and nothing is in clear sight in front of the windows. Burglars just love to walk around and window-shop!
- Put it in the boot: We all want to make sure children aren’t able to get a sneak peek at their Christmas presents before the big day, and a large number of parents use their cars or car boots to hide their children’s Christmas presents.
Christmas time Home Safety DONT’S
- Send it to work, if you won’t be at home: Not being home to collect your deliveries. Thieves start stealing home deliveries left unattended on doorsteps well before Christmas day, to avoid this set your delivery address to your work address.
- Nothing under the tree: You should avoid putting presents underneath the tree until Christmas Eve (dogs, cats & impatient children probably don’t need the temptation).
- It is a house not a shop display: People place their trees in front of windows within clear sight for thieves to see directly into their home. Meaning they see all the gifts sitting under the tree.
- Batten down the Hatches: Shed and garages shouldn’t be left unlocked. A lot of thieves do break-in to sheds, and they’re looking for car tools or food, fridges, freezers and anything else easy to sell.
- Proper placement of security equipment: Having your security system installed next to a window or door with no covering. Doing so allows a burglar to look inside and see if your security system is live and active.
- Christmas Party doesn’t mean open house: Holding Christmas parties at your home and forgetting to lock the front door or shut the gates as visitors are coming and going. Leaving your home wide open for a thief to come wandering into your home, while you’re busy looking after your guests.
About APG
The Asset Protection Group comprises a group of Fire & Security companies with shared ownership and one common goal, protecting your most important assets. As a collective group, we look to offer protection to your assets to assist you with your ongoing success within your own business.