When to reject the cheapest guarding offer, and why it ends up costing more

Full time is 40 hours a week (Labour Code art. 189), and every full-time employee is owed at least the statutory minimum wage (the amount is in our guide to security guard pay in 2026). A 24/7 post needs at least 4.2 full-time positions, as the guarding cost guide explains, and a third of its hours are nights at +25% and a seventh are Sundays at +75%.

Even that is not the whole legal floor: it leaves out the employer’s contributions and anything else the employer owes beyond the monthly wage. Leave, cover, supervision, uniform, equipment and overheads come on top.

The test: ask the company to show, for your hours, how its price covers 4.2 full-time positions at lawful pay with the premiums, before anything else. If it cannot show it, the offer is rejected — something is missing. Price never puts an offer on the shortlist; it can only take one off.

• Nights: 8 hours × 7 days = 56 of the week’s 168 hours, or 1 in 3. The Labour Code adds +25% for work between 22:00 and 06:00 (art. 150).
• Sundays: 24 of 168 hours, or 1 in 7. Sundays and public holidays carry +75% (art. 219).
• Public holidays: each one that falls on a weekday adds another 24 premium hours.

An offer that charges every hour the same, without showing where the premiums sit, does one of two things: it has built them in and can show how, or it does not pay them. Ask for them as separate lines, with the calculation explained.

• Pay: fewer hours declared than worked, or premiums left unpaid. A guard paid less than they work is the first to leave.
• Supervision: no supervisor visits the post; what happens at night you learn in the morning, if at all.
• Replacement: when the guard is ill or quits, the post stays empty or the same person works a double shift.
• Training: the new guard starts without a briefing on your post orders, systems and people.
• Reporting: no shift report and no incident log, so you have nothing to check — or to rely on.

Every month the company reports its staff to the police, with each person’s work-licence number and post (Law 2518/1997, art. 4). Ask for the numbers of the guards on your site; a price that does not work with declared guards will show there.

• Incidents: whatever a cheaper offer seems to save over a year, one equipment theft, one break-in or one leak caught too late can cost more.
• Liability: without an incident log you cannot show what happened and when. Law 2518/1997 does not require civil liability insurance, so if the contract does not provide for it, the loss may stay with you.
• Turnover: every new guard needs a briefing, new access and an introduction to your staff. That time is yours, and every change is a point where instructions get lost.

1. One specification for all: posts, hours for each day of the week, duties, patrol route, the reports you want.
2. Price per line: regular hours, nights, Sundays and holidays, supervision, equipment — separately.
3. Legal-floor check: ask each company to show how its price covers lawful pay for the full-time positions the same hours need, plus the premiums; if it cannot, reject the offer.
4. Same deliverables: the same replacement time, the same reports, the same insurance cover written into the contract.
5. Exclusions in writing: what is not included should be stated, not discovered.

For the questions that decide between the offers that pass the check, see questions to ask before signing.

A lower total can legitimately come from design: which hours really need a person, which posts can become patrols where the risk allows, where technology helps. That is a question of scope for the company making the offer — never a discount on the guard’s hour.

OVIT shows clients patrols, incidents and reports in one live picture through the Guardly platform, so you see what you are paying for. See our guarding services or request an offer broken down by the hour.