> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://beathantechnologies.com/blog/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # A guard asleep on duty: accountability guards don't work around - URL: https://beathantechnologies.com/blog/guard-sleeping-on-duty/ - Published: 2026-10-22T08:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-22T08:00:00.000Z - Description: A supervisor's word against the guard's is all most operators have. Welfare checks give you a dated record, and give the guard a reason to answer. - Author: Liam van Huyssteen - Tags: Sentry, Security operations, #kw: security guard sleeping on duty A security guard sleeping on duty leaves a site unprotected for as long as they are asleep, and usually leaves the operator with nothing to go on afterwards except a supervisor's word. Most of the tools sold to fix it treat every guard as a suspect, and guards who feel watched find ways around them. The checks that hold up are the ones a guard has their own reason to answer. Below is what proves a guard was awake and on the post, and why the same record protects the guard as much as it protects the client. ## Why is a security guard sleeping on duty so hard to prove? Because the usual evidence is thin. A supervisor's visit at 03:00 shows you one moment on one night. The paper occurrence book says "All in order, 02:00" in the guard's own handwriting, and nothing shows when it was actually written. When a client complains that the guard was asleep, the operator has a disputed story on each side and very little else. That gap is what makes a sleeping guard so expensive. Either the complaint is true and you could not have known, or it is false and you cannot show it. ## Why do guards work around monitoring? Monitoring that only exists to catch people out gets treated like an opponent. If a guard experiences a system as something that reports them, the effort goes into beating it rather than answering it: the phone left on a charger in the guardhouse, the check-in done by whoever is awake, the entry written up at the end of the shift. A check that the guard benefits from is much harder to cheat, because nobody bothers. Welfare checks are built that way. ## How does a welfare check catch a guard asleep on duty? In Sentry, a welfare check runs at an interval the company sets: every 15 or 30 minutes, or every 1, 2 or 4 hours. When one is due, the handset switches its screen on and an alarm rings, even if the phone is locked or on silent. The guard has a set time to answer, between 1 and 10 minutes, and the alarm does not stop until they do. Answering takes three steps. The guard confirms they are okay, answers a simple sum to show someone awake is holding the phone, and identifies themselves the same way they clock in: employee number, NFC tag, ID card barcode or face recognition. A guard who is asleep has to wake up to do it, and the check records who answered, not just that someone did. Every check ends up in one of four states the control room can see: - answered correctly; - a wrong answer, when both sums were wrong; - help requested, when the guard tapped **I need help** at any step; - missed, when nobody answered in time. A missed check shows on the dashboard, and the department heads the company has chosen get a WhatsApp and an email. Our post on [lone worker safety for security guards](https://beathantechnologies.com/blog/lone-worker-safety-security-guards/) goes through the setup in more detail. ## Why is a welfare check for the guard, not against them? Because the same check that wakes a sleeping guard is the one that raises the alarm when a guard cannot answer for a worse reason. A guard who has collapsed, been hurt or been taken off the post also misses the check, and the control room hears about it within minutes rather than at the next shift change. Every step of the check has an **I need help** button, and the SOS button sits in the corner of every screen in the app. When a guard presses SOS, the alert sends after a seven-second countdown unless they cancel it, so it still goes out if someone stops them pressing anything else. Explained to a guard like that, a check that might be what gets help to them at 03:00 stops being something to dodge. ## What does a missed welfare check actually prove? A missed check proves that nobody answered the handset at that post within the time allowed, and it records exactly when. It does not prove the guard was asleep. They might have been walking the perimeter without the phone, or dealing with something at the gate. That is why it is worth treating a single missed check as the start of a conversation, not a verdict. A pattern is different. Missed checks at the same time every night, on the same post, tell you far more than one bad night does, and they are dated records rather than one person's recollection. If it does come to a warning letter, that is a much firmer place to start from. ## How else can guards be held accountable without being treated as suspects? The same principle runs through the rest of the shift. Clock-in records who actually arrived, identified at the post by employee number, NFC tag, ID card or face, on a handset that knows which site it is at. That is how [security guard clock-in](https://beathantechnologies.com/sentry/roll-call) stops a colleague clocking in for someone who is still on the way. During the shift, entries in Sentry's [digital occurrence book](https://beathantechnologies.com/sentry/occurrence-book) carry the guard's name, the time and where they were, with photos and witnesses if needed, and cannot be edited once they are sent. Our guide to [writing occurrence book entries that hold up](https://beathantechnologies.com/blog/occurrence-book-entries/) covers what makes an entry worth having. In each case the guard who did the job properly comes out of the record looking good, which gives them a reason to keep it accurate. ## Where to go next Welfare checks and the SOS button are part of [Sentry](https://beathantechnologies.com/sentry). If guards asleep on duty, or complaints you cannot answer, are costing you clients, [tell us how many sites you run](https://beathantechnologies.com/contact) and we will show you the checks on a handset.