Guides
Boris Szelcsanyi
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The hardest part of adopting new software isn't choosing it but getting people to actually use it—veteran guards with years of experience are the toughest to convert because the challenge is changing a decade-old habit, not the technology itself.
Make the app non-negotiable from day one and allow two to three weeks of consistent enforcement until it becomes muscle memory; companies that position it as optional have the worst adoption rates.
"I forgot to check in" is the number-one complaint, which OnDuty addresses with multiple customizable pre-shift notifications (24 hours, 2 hours, 30 minutes, and at start time) and a forthcoming Early Check-In feature.
Onboarding a new guard now takes about five minutes with OnDuty: the manager enters an email, credentials and download links are sent automatically, and the guard is ready before their first shift begins.
Position the app as something that makes work easier rather than a surveillance tool—managers want less manual work, not more features, so every feature should remove a task instead of adding another screen to click through.
!Security workforce management app interface
I've had hundreds of conversations with security company managers over the past few years. And there's one thing almost everyone underestimates: getting people to actually use the software is harder than choosing it.
The features look great in demos. The ROI calculations make sense. But then you roll it out—and half your team is still texting in their hours or "forgetting" to use the app.
Here's what I've learned about why that happens, and what actually works to fix it.
1. Your Veteran Guards Are the Hardest to Convert
New hires adapt fast. They download the app on day one, follow the onboarding steps, and never question it. That's just how things work here.
Your 10-year veterans? Different story.
One operations manager explained it perfectly: "It's not that OnDuty AI is hard. It's that my experienced guys have been doing this job without any system for years. The app isn't the problem—the habit change is."
This tracks with what we see across almost every company. The guards who struggle most aren't struggling with technology. They're struggling with doing something differently than they've done it for a decade.
What actually helps:
Make the app non-negotiable from day one. Not in a threatening way, but matter-of-factly. "This is how we track time now." The companies that position it as optional or "when you can" have the worst adoption rates.
More importantly—show them what's in it for them. Nobody cares that you save time on payroll. But when a guard realizes they'll never have to argue about their hours again because everything is logged automatically? That clicks.
Give it 2-3 weeks of consistent enforcement. After that, it becomes muscle memory. But if you let people skip it "just this once" during that window, you're back to square one.
2. "I Forgot to Check In" Is the #1 Complaint
Ask any manager what they hear most from their team. It's this: "Sorry, I forgot to check in."
Missed check-ins create a cascade of problems. The guard has to message someone. The manager has to manually fix the records. Your time data becomes less trustworthy. Everyone's annoyed.
We spent a lot of time on this one because it's so common.
Our solution:
Multiple notifications before each shift—24 hours out, 2 hours, 30 minutes, and at start time. Not everyone needs all of them, so managers can customize what makes sense for their team.
We're also rolling out Early Check-In soon. Guards who arrive 10 minutes early can check in right away instead of standing around waiting for the exact shift start time. Sounds small, but it removes a real friction point.
3. Once They Start Using It, Most Guards Actually Like It
This surprised me at first. I expected resistance. What I hear instead from most guards after a few weeks: relief.
Think about what their job looked like before. Handwritten time logs. Paper incident reports. Trying to remember at the end of the month which shifts they worked. Payroll disputes because someone's notes don't match the schedule.
Now? They tap a button, their time is logged, and they're done. No paperwork. No arguing about hours. Everything's recorded automatically.
One manager told me his guards started calling the old way "the dark ages." That's when I knew we were onto something.
We've gathered more detailed feedback in our article on how security guards actually feel about using workforce apps.
!From paper-based processes to digital workforce management
The lesson here: Don't position the app as a surveillance tool. Position it as something that makes their life easier. The difference in adoption is night and day.
4. Onboarding Used to Take Days. Now It Takes Minutes.
I've heard horror stories about legacy systems. Three-day onboarding processes. IT tickets to create accounts. Desktop software that only works on specific computers. Guards who couldn't start their first shift because their credentials weren't ready.
That's insane. It shouldn't take longer to set up an employee in your software than it takes to hand them a uniform.
How we fixed it:
Manager enters the new guard's email address
Guard receives credentials and download links automatically
Guard completes a few onboarding steps in the app
They're ready to work
Start to finish, maybe 5 minutes. A new guard can be fully set up before their first shift even starts.
This matters more than people realize. Every day of friction during onboarding is a day where the new hire thinks "this place is disorganized." First impressions stick.
5. "More Features" Isn't What Managers Actually Want
When I ask managers what they wish the software could do, the answer is rarely "add more features." It's almost always some version of: "I want to do less manual work."
Automatically generate shift offers instead of typing them out. Pull employee data from documents instead of entering it by hand. Create reports without exporting to Excel and reformatting everything.
We're working on AI-powered features that handle exactly this—scanning documents to auto-fill forms, generating contracts from existing data, that kind of thing.
But the principle is what matters: every feature we build should remove a task from someone's day, not add another screen to click through.
What Makes Companies Actually Recommend New Software?
I always ask this question in our conversations. After all the headaches of switching systems, what makes someone say "yeah, you should use this too"?
It comes down to a few things:
Control. Knowing where your team is and what's happening without making phone calls.
Reliability. Guards showing up on time because they got the reminders. Shifts getting covered because the system flagged the gap.
Less admin work. Payroll that basically runs itself. Schedules that don't require a spreadsheet PhD.
One manager put it simply: "I stopped dreading Monday mornings."
That's the goal. Not flashy features. Just making the work less painful.
The Real Measure of Success
Here's something I think about a lot: the best software eventually becomes invisible. You stop noticing you're using it. It just works, and you get on with your actual job.
That's harder to achieve than it sounds. But it's what we're building toward.
If you're evaluating workforce management software, don't just look at the feature list. Ask how other companies got their teams to actually use it. That's where most implementations succeed or fail.
Curious how other security companies handled the switch? Book a demo and I'll share some real stories from teams that have been through it.