FPS officials said in a statement that it has increased both overt and covert inspections of security posts, as well as its oversight of contract guards.
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Hmmm, I wonder if FPS is reading Feral Jundi. lol Actually this practice of overt and covert inspections is pretty common in a few agencies out there. The Postal Service even uses mystery shoppers to get a real feel for their customer service and inner workings of offices, so this is nothing new for federal agencies. Mystery shopping is very common in other industries as well, and I have covered that here before.
But what boggles my mind, is why haven’t more private military companies used this concept? If you truly care about what is going on with your company, you should be fully involved with collecting intelligence on the inner workings of your company. That means sending folks out to your sites and talking with the contractor on the ground.
I am not talking about just talking with the managers either. I am talking about getting feedback from the backbone of your company, and that is the contractor doing the work. These are the folks who represent the end result of all of your company policies and training, and a lot depends upon them. These guys and gals are the ones your customer sees on a daily basis, and makes their judgements about your company based on the actions of these contractors. The managers are there to lead and to implement company policy and training, and the best gauge for seeing if they did their job, is to study the contractors they are in charge of.
Also, it is important to note that this is not a witch hunt, or undercover gotcha stuff. It costs money to fire and hire folks, so ideally, this information is used to tweak policies where it makes it easy for contractors to do the right thing. It also helps in identifying inefficiencies or identifying key training points that need to be reworked or re-emphasized in order to get a better outcome. That is what you use this intelligence for. Of course if you catch criminal activity within your company, you should act upon that information pronto. But all in all, the idea behind obtaining feedback is to feed your Kaizen machine and make your company a top performer.
The mystery shopping or covert employee thing is something I have mentioned before, which is just one tool to gain that kind of information about the workings of your company. It is an extra cost, but it is the kind of investment that will pay for itself handily down the line. Because you can ask folks what is going on with your company, and they might give the straight scoop. Or they might not, partly because they don’t think you will do anything about it or they don’t trust the idea of giving you information that may or may not cause reprisals (thats if your company has a culture that does not support feedback, and if that is the case, you need to fix that by actually acting upon feedback and showing you care).
You could also use customer or employee feedback software to mine that information gold. Either way, if you are not doing these things, and actually acting upon that information to make your company better, then you are certainly headed down a road of uncertainty and peril. You are just gambling at that point, with the hopes that nothing bad will happen to your company and that everything is just rosy with your people. pfffft.
I guess my point with all of this, is that don’t be the company where the head does not know what the tail is doing. Seek that feedback gold, and invest in the necessary measures to make that happen. Start by just asking honestly what the issues are (and be responsive to those issues!!!), and if that doesn’t work, do surprise inspections, use software to gain employee and customer feedback, and finally, use mystery employees and get a solid read on what is really going on with your company. –Matt
Edit: Also check out this article about Best Buy and how they used ’employee feedback’ to their advantage.
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Use of private security guards at government buildings comes under scrutiny
By Ed O’KeefeThursday, March 11, 2010
There’s a saying among some private security guards in the Washington region: “There’s no security in security.”
Poor job security and the potential dangers that come with protecting government buildings make it a risky line of work, said guards interviewed this week.
Unlike officers with the Pentagon Force Protection Agency who gunned down shooter John Patrick Bedell last week, most security guards at federal buildings in the Washington region are employed by private firms that have contracts with the Federal Protective Service.
The FPS, part of the Department of Homeland Security, provides security at more than 9,000 federal buildings across the country and uses about 15,000 contract security guards to support about 1,200 officers, inspectors and administrative staffers, according to agency officials. A House hearing Tuesday will focus on the FPS’s future and its response to a 2009 Government Accountability Office investigation that exposed security gaps at 10 major federal buildings. The GAO report also faulted the FPS for inconsistent training and poor oversight of private guards.
Next month, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) plans to introduce legislation that addresses the agency’s future and broader threats and security measures at all civilian and military facilities, aides said.