075: Keys to Managing Supervisors Pt. 3 - Establishing a Process

Today, we feature Part 3 in our six-part series on managing supervisors. In Part 1 we talked about the gap that exists between owners and supervisors, and in Part 2 we went over some ways owners can bridge that gap and get supervisors to buy into their vision for the company.

In this post, we move from ideas into action. Sharing your vision with supervisors is important, but it means nothing if you don’t have the tools in place to implement that vision. That starts with a clear and efficient process so that everybody understands their roles and how to go about them.

Processes Make Your Business Competitive

Cohesive business processes make it much easier to attract and retain clients. When everyone in your company knows what to do and is pulling in the same direction, your entire operation becomes more efficient, more professional, and puts on a better face for customers.

This goes beyond even just operations to the handling of administrative tasks, proposals, and basic customer interaction. In fact, one of the most important processes you can have in place is how to handle calls from customers.

Imagine a customer calling asking to speak to their account manager, and the receptionist doesn’t know who the customer is, or isn’t sure how to reach the account manager. Those are the kinds of things that send up red flags for customers and make them doubt how well run the rest of your business is.

Other tasks you should have processes in place for include:

• Post inspections
• Patrol routes
• Dispatching officers
• Chain of escalation for incidents
• Responding to customer complaints
• Addressing issues with officers (tardiness, poor reports, lack of professionalism, etc.)
• Hiring
• Training
• Billing

These are just some of the processes a security company needs to have in place. Work with your supervisors to develop these processes so that they feel invested in them and will be more motivated to follow them. 

Processes Enable Growth

Growth is great. Everybody wants their business to grow so they can have more customers, hire more employees, and make more money. Unfortunately, growth also comes with a lot of headaches. As you expand, more problems crop up, to the point where if you’re not prepared to grow a new account may not be worth the problems it causes. In general, this starts to happen around the time you hit 100 officers.

“I’d say three out of five companies that are looking for a tool like ours are at the hundred guard spot,” said Johnny on today’s episode.

When you’re growing, employees and supervisors need to be able to come in and hit the ground running, which means having the tools and processes in place for them to immediately succeed. As new accounts and new issues crop up, it’s important just to have clear delineation of responsibilities so that everyone knows who’s responsible for what.

If the customer wants to change up the reports during onboarding, should that go through the account manager or the field supervisor? If you have to quickly hire a bunch of guards to service a new account, how do you get them trained in time? 

In smaller companies, the owner can plug these gaps and take care of problems that arise, but once you hit that 100-officer number it just becomes overwhelming. At that point, you need to have clear, written processes describing who is responsible for what tasks and how they need to do them. 

Related Article: Should I Use Security Reporting Software as an Upsell or Value Add?

Processes Drive Profits

Not only do processes make everything run smoother, they give you a clear baseline for how to improve. If you have clearly established processes that everyone follows, you can review the data, tweak the process, and find ways to save time and money. Without a clear process, it will be almost impossible to measure the impact of any changes you make.

Building processes can seem overwhelming, so start with just one. Find a situation that your company encounters on a regular basis, and go step by step through the ideal response. Often, just taking the time to write things down can reveal significant inefficiencies. We don’t question why we do things until we actual start writing them down.

Having processes in place allow you to measure cost and efficiency more accurately, and what gets measured gets improved. Companies that want to keep improving, growing, and increasing their profitability need to have processes in place so that supervisors and employees are performing at the highest level.