How to Prevent an Office Lockout - a Comprehensive Guide

Similar to car and home lockouts, office lockouts can occur for a number of reasons. When they do, they rapidly turn into a stressful, frustrating, and highly inconvenient problem that requires an immediate solution. Security problems can heavily disrupt business activities, affect productivity, and ultimately cost your business a lot of money. This is why it is paramount to be able to guarantee ongoing protection and access to all premises.

To come to your help, we have compiled a comprehensive and helpful guide on how to prevent office lockouts using a few common sense rules as well as the best types of locks that can significantly minimize the risk of getting locked out.

What Is an Office Lockout?

Office lockouts occur when individuals cannot get access to office premises because of a missing key, a locked door, or a faulty security system. By understanding what are the reasons that could lead to a lockout from your business space, you should have an easier time taking the best preemptive measures for future lockout scenarios.

What Could Cause an Office Lockout Problem?

An office lockout can be caused by a number of factors. Here are the most popular:

• Missing key. A key that has been lost, stolen, or misplaced is one of the most frequent causes of an office lockout. Employees or building/office managers who have lost their keys may be the main culprits behind a lockout.

• Faulty lock mechanisms. Locks that are damaged as a result of repetitive use over time, natural wear and tear, forced entry attempts, acts of vandalism, or other exterior forces beyond control will usually cause a lockout since they can no longer be operated.

• Broken keys stuck inside the lock. A faulty key that has broken and remained jammed in the keyway will also make it impossible for anyone to lock and unlock the door.

• Faulty electronic access control systems. Power outages along with mechanical and software malfunctions could all result in a system failure that will usually cause a lockout.

What To Do If You Are Locked Out Of the Office

If the dreaded incident has already occurred, keep your calm and use a mobile phone to call an employee or business partner who might have a spare key you can use to get in. If the problem is a jammed key in the lock or a broken lock mechanism, then you're going to need to call an emergency locksmith service that handles office lockouts. We specialize in 24/7 emergency lockout services at affordable rates for all types of standard and master lock systems, so be sure to put our number on speed dial.

Tips And Secrets For Preventing an Office Lockout

• Pay attention to the whereabouts of your key or access card at all times.

Whether you use regular metal keys or access cards to manage access to your office space, make sure you always keep the keys on you at all times. No matter if you need to quickly step out of the office or tackle an unexpected problem, double-check and make sure that you have your keys on you. Do not rely on the fact that someone will always be in the office when you will return.

• Ensure periodical maintenance for all locks and security systems

Regularly inspect and maintain your locks and all security systems to ensure that they are working flawlessly 24/7. This will prevent a series of malfunctions that will eventually lead to office lockouts. Carefully schedule all routine maintenance checkups and inspections and immediately fix any lock problem you or your employees may notice.

• Implement the best key and access control policies for your office space

Set up, enforce, and periodically reinforce your access control and key control policies at the workplace. This needs to include policies regarding the way key logs should be maintained, establishing who should be authorized to use specific keys as part of a master lock and key system, and when and how to ask employees to return their keys when leaving the company.

• Install a specialized lock that can help prevent lockouts

Key card locks can make a huge difference in lowering the risk of lockout problems for office and business spaces. As long as the employees who are supposed to hold the cards always keep them hanging by their necks, lockout issues caused by lost or missing cards should not be a problem. Also, since an office space will usually use more than one access card, other employees should be able to use their own cards to prevent lockouts.

Biometric locks add a few extra layers of protection to any lock mechanism. They completely eliminate the need to carry, store, and use keys or access cards and they enable access control via fingerprint or iris print, which cannot be duplicated.

Keypad locks eliminate the risk of losing or leaving keys behind and causing lockouts. Since these lock systems require users to memorize 4- to 6-digit codes, the chances of a lockout occurring because of a missing key or access card are completely eliminated. Even more, in the event of any suspicion of someone who is not entitled to use an access code has somehow learned it, changing the code can be done in just a few minutes.

If you need more expert tips on how to prevent an office lockout, you wish to replace your current locks with one of the recommended locks to lower the risk of locking yourself out, or you are currently dealing with such an emergency and you need immediate assistance, give us a call!