G4S Japan has created a 24/7 Global Security Operations Centre (GSOC) for a Fortune 200 global cloud-based software company with the aim of improving safety and welfare for their employees across the Asia-Pacific region.
The requirements for G4S Japan were reportedly high English and Japanese language skills, the ability to react quickly to any situation and to operate like a public emergency call centre.
Between May and October Japan is said to ‘brace itself’ for both the typhoon and the monsoon season, bringing strong winds and heavy rainfall.
In the event of a serious typhoon, residents may be told to evacuate their homes due to potential flooding, landslides and a risk of homes collapsing. It’s natural disasters such as these where people may be displaced and major incident plans are enacted.
A Global Security Operations Centre (GSOC), G4S believes, allows companies in these situations to check on their employees welfare and safety by providing security services aimed at keeping their people safe during and after an incident.
“Ensuring the safety and security of our customer’s employees and G4S Japan’s staff is of paramount importance to us as a company,” said Eiki Hata, Representative Director of G4S Japan. “Since 2019, we have worked with our customer to build a 24/7 function that notifies them of natural or critical incidents, and follows up with their staff in, and around, the affected area.”
G4S Japan’s GSOC capabilities started in 2020.
According to a 2019 report Japan dropped to 53rd in global English proficiency, squarely in the “low proficiency” band. Despite proving difficult, the firm said, to find people who were fluent in both Japanese and English in such a country, it succeeded in finding its first staff member and the service was launched.
The team has since grown to a team of five operators and a supervisor, made up of Japanese, Russian, American and Bruneian employees.
As well as its disaster awareness capabilities, the GSOC operators are said to be able to monitor access controls into the customers’ Japanese and South Korean offices. If a door is left open for a certain period, the GSOC is designed to inform the security officers on the ground to rectify the situation.
They are also responsible for collating reports for the customer, something which proved critical during the pandemic.
“Our customer was keen to understand how many employees were coming into the office at different points throughout the pandemic, so they could ensure their risk assessments were accurate.” Eiki Hata continued. “The GSOC team were able to regularly pull this information from the data they record via access passes and/or fobs.”
While serious incidents are rare, in October 2022 a tragic event saw that GSOC capabilities may be required more than ever, the firm believes.
On 29 October, 153 people were killed and 82 others were injured after a stampede at a Halloween festivity in Seoul.
It is reported that the GSOC team then conducted direct, individualised safety checks for 53 employees known to live within a 5 mile (8 km) radius to ensure they had come to no harm.
A more general advisory email was then said to have been sent to all employees in the greater Seoul area, a total of 206 individuals, to avoid the affected area.
As the GSOC operator, G4S Japan had access in such an emergency situation to the customer’s employee database of contact details. All responses were said to be recorded in real-time so management at the software company were kept informed.
The company said that within 24 hours, 98% of the individuals within the 5 miles radius were accounted for. Full accountability was achieved within 36 hours.
Representative Director of G4S Japan Eiki Hata concluded: “I am incredibly proud of the work my colleagues played in ensuring our customers’ employees were safe following these incredibly sad events.
“Our role for this global customer is not just monitoring doors and alarm systems – we go above and beyond to ensure we help them and their employees remain safe, even when they are out of the office and off duty.”
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