Communication

In the Security industry, well any workplace in general, communication is everything. Sure not every job requires that everyone informs other departments of what they’re doing, but if it effects your department then it is very important. In a typical Security environment you must work as a team.

In an art museum guards do not want to communicate with each other because of mental isolation. Being in a quiet, boring environment every day can have one of two effects on a guard’s psyche while in relation to communicating. You either shut everyone out or you get desperate for human interaction.

A guard’s personal mood has a lot to do with it too. I know the signs because I have been at both ends of the spectrum based on whatever is going on in my life at the time. You do have to talk to the guests if they need help, but some guards use too much communication and can lead to alienating their visit.

From a managerial aspect there is communication but it is a lot of information we do not need to know, or do not want to know, and none of it is ever the topics we NEED to hear. God forbid we get into the need to evacuate the building we will all be dead before anyone gets to now what is going on. 

In the event of an emergency we are told to WAIT for our Supervisor, to tell us face-to-face, that the building needs to be evacuated. First of all the whole reason we needed to was because a suspicious package was left at one of the entrances. The package just turned out to be some papers that another department ordered, but the paranoia that runs on over-drive in an art museum kicked in.

Everyone ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, fellow officers were turning into Supervisors, and guests had no idea one where to exit the building because the manager had (at that point) never went over the proper evacuation procedure. Everything turned out fine but the problem is there was no communication. If no one updates the situation panic will set in. Even in cases of no emergency nothing runs smoothly without it.