In this sec­tion we would like to provide a small selec­tion aid for the choice of the right secur­ity part­ner for your event.

Legal Foundations

In order to be able to offer secur­ity ser­vices in Aus­tria, the pro­vider has to own the appro­pri­ate busi­ness license. Even though the secur­ity industry is a licensed trade, there are many sup­pli­ers on the mar­ket who can­not demon­strate the required busi­ness license. The tasks of the guards are reg­u­lated in § 129 of the trade reg­u­la­tion act for the secur­ity industry (guards and private detect­ives). In order to be able to offer the secur­ity ser­vice for events, a busi­ness license pur­su­ant to § 129 (4) point 5 must be available.

Every oth­er busi­ness license, like ‘organ­isa­tion of events’ or ‘private detect­ive’, does not entitle to under­take secur­ity ser­vices for events. Sim­il­arly, a guard is not author­ized to offer per­son­al pro­tec­tion, as this task is reserved for a private detect­ive. You have to bear in mind that in the event of dam­age you could be held liable. There­fore, it is recom­mend­able to check wheth­er your secur­ity ser­vice pro­vider has the appro­pri­ate busi­ness license.

Insurance

The liab­il­ity insur­ance between € 2,000,000 and € 5,000,000 for per­son­al injury or prop­erty dam­age is the min­im­um that is recom­men­ded by vari­ous organ­iz­a­tions. These insur­ances are very costly, as the insur­ance industry clas­si­fies the risk asso­ci­ated with event secur­ity as par­tic­u­larly high. The min­im­um premi­um for liab­il­ity insur­ance amounts to approx. € 5,500 per annum. This presents a very high fin­an­cial expendit­ure for small com­pan­ies. As a res­ult, an unsuit­able insur­ance or under­insur­ance might be delib­er­ately accep­ted by these com­pan­ies, or in the worst case liab­il­ity insur­ance might be waived com­pletely. Cov­er­age by insur­ance without the suit­able busi­ness license is not pos­sible in any case.

Social Security

Even though it should be the cus­tom for all pro­viders of secur­ity ser­vices to register their employ­ees for social secur­ity there are still com­pan­ies that use Werk­ver­träge or do not register their employ­ees at all. As a res­ult, these pro­viders get a huge advant­age in the inter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tion. On the one hand, no employ­er con­tri­bu­tion (social secur­ity, dis­ab­il­ity allow­ance, sub­way tax, oth­er loc­al taxes..) is being cal­cu­lated (around 30% of the gross wage bill). On the oth­er hand, the will­ing­ness of many employ­ees to work under these ‘favour­able’ con­di­tions is much greater.

Soon­er or later it may be the case in the event industry, as it is already in the con­struc­tion industry, that the event organ­izer will be held liable for the social secur­ity offences of the sub­con­tract­or. In addi­tion, pen­al laws have become effect­ive since 2005, which also allow the crim­in­al pro­sec­u­tion of such offenses. A crim­in­al liab­il­ity as con­trib­ut­ing or determ­in­ing offend­er is con­ceiv­able for every cli­ent in this regard. This is why great care is very import­ant in the choice of a reli­able provider.

Staff

The col­lect­ive agree­ment for employ­ees registered in the secur­ity industry cur­rently stands (as of 2018) at € 8,90 gross, for employ­ees in the event secur­ity trade € 8,17 gross (in com­par­is­on, the col­lect­ive agree­ment wage for clean­ers amounts to € 8,68 gross). Hourly rates of around € 13,50 allow a max­im­al pay­ment of the col­lect­ive agree­ment wage, in com­pli­ance with leg­al and social insur­ance require­ments. In addi­tion to that, liab­il­ity and leg­al pro­tec­tion insur­ances as well as over­head expenses have to be deduc­ted from the remain­ing amount. The train­ing of the employ­ees should also be fin­anced, which often has to fall by the way­side, unfor­tu­nately, due to the hourly rates men­tioned above. Adequate remu­ner­a­tion of employ­ees causes not only a bet­ter edu­ca­tion, but also less turnover and thus great­er work experience.

Proposal preparation

No event is like the oth­er – event pro­ced­ures are nev­er identic­al. This is why the plan­ning of event secur­ity requires care and exper­i­ence. You can recog­nize reput­able pro­viders in that they do not send you an uncom­men­ted pro­pos­al upon your request. But rather they inspect the loc­a­tion of the event on-site. Only there­after they present a bind­ing costs estim­ate. No ser­i­ous offer can be draf­ted without this on-site inspection.

References

In order to find out wheth­er a pro­vider owns the neces­sary exper­i­ence for an event to pass smoothly, a look at the ref­er­ence list of the poten­tial con­tract­or is essen­tial. In the area of event secur­ity there are most of all pub­lic events that are being super­vised (those are often repor­ted on in the media). It is safe to assume that com­pan­ies which state in the ref­er­ence sec­tion “for reas­ons of dis­cre­tion, no ref­er­ences are men­tioned”, the appro­pri­ate ref­er­ences are not available.

Depend­ing on the type of event you are plan­ning, you should also be aware of the ref­er­en­tial events that have been super­vised by your pro­spect­ive con­tract­or. If the ref­er­ences only include proms or exper­i­ence in club secur­ity then this com­pany is not likely to be the right choice for a large-scale event.

Fur­ther­more, it is cru­cial to inquire wheth­er the com­pany was mainly respons­ible for the lis­ted ref­er­ence, or merely as a sub­con­tract­or. Thus would mean that the com­pany in ques­tion only man­aged a small part of the event. Very often large-scale events are giv­en as ref­er­ences, but upon request it turns out that only one or two employ­ees of this com­pany were actu­ally present at the respect­ive event. From such a ref­er­ence it is, of course, not pos­sible to draw a con­clu­sion on the abil­ity of plan­ning and organ­iz­ing a large-scale event.

Anoth­er indic­a­tion of cus­tom­er sat­is­fac­tion is the repeated assign­ment of a com­pany. If you are not con­vinced of the choice of your secur­ity part­ner, it is advis­able to ask for ref­er­ence cus­tom­ers of sim­il­ar events. There you can inquire after their exper­i­ences with the com­pany in question.

Equipment

Radi­os are essen­tial tools at events – without com­mu­nic­a­tion there can be no effect­ive work­ing and no fast response. Radio devices with head­sets are neces­sary in order to com­mu­nic­ate clearly. Unfor­tu­nately pro­fes­sion­al radio devices still do not belong to the stand­ard means of com­mu­nic­a­tion for secur­ity ser­vice pro­viders because the acquis­i­tion costs are very high.

The big­ger or more sig­ni­fic­ant your event should be, the more you should trust in an exper­i­enced part­ner. After all, errors always fall back on the organ­izer and bring neg­at­ive PR too.