If you are a facility manager, you have probably wondered at some point if your facilities are truly secure with basic lock and key technology. Here’s Kevin’s story and how electronic access control might be just what you need.
I am amazed by the responses we received during a market research survey we conducted with Facility Executive Magazine.
Here’s what blew my mind and where my definition of broken differs: 40% of survey respondents said that they still use lock and key solutions to protect their facilities.
Furthermore, two-thirds of survey respondents said that they were not worried about their physical security, and half said that they were very confident that only the right people were getting in.
For those 40% of facility managers still using lock and key, how do you know that only the right people are getting into your facility? Do you double as the doorman? Do you know everyone who lives/works/enters your facility? Are you on a first name basis with all those people? People have told me that I am a very good worrier, so maybe this is why I cannot relate, but if I were running a facility, I probably would want to have some form of electronic access control to be sure only the right folks get in. Let’s be real here, lock and key is truly antiquated technology, you can just picture what an ancient Egyptian key and ring looks like and you get the idea.
No, it’s not broken in the traditional sense. But in my interpretation, it is inefficient and requires a modern process upgrade.
Another quick story. Back in high school I was a shift supervisor at Starbucks and responsible for opening or closing the store, depending on the schedule. My manager at the time, put up with a lot of teenage/college student errr… inconsistencies. Yes, he was a manager of a Starbucks, not a facility manager, but he managed the facility and dealt with a lot of similar issues. My shift started at 5:30AM. On more than one occasion I forgot my store key at home, and I woke my manager (probably on his day off) to come unlock the store for me. This of course snowballed into the store being opened late and me having to apologize to dozens of angry coffee lovers.
Also, after work one day, stinking of sumatra and house blend, I… ummmm… lost my key. So embarrassing! My poor manager had to rekey the place and call for a staff meeting to distribute the new keys to the shift supervisors and the assistant manager.
Today, there are wonderful modern electronic access control technologies that could make the lives of today’s store managers much easier. Today facility managers can avoid security risks, can start preemptive security practices and can save themselves from teenage Kevin losing or forgetting keys. It’s as easy as deploying a cloud-based physical access control solution.
Please click here to read the full Facility Manager Executive Report that showcases security gaps and best practices to solve those gaps.