Developing the softer skills

The relevance of candidate background for the in-house security role will obviously be determined by the nature of the work and the immediate crime environment. Former senior officers from the police and military possess well-developed strategic management skills ideally suited to the very highest positions in corporate security management.

Indeed, in many environments, an armed services, state intelligence service or police service background is essential. By way of example, it would be almost impossible to secure an oil company in Russia against organised crime without a very experienced core of former KGB/FSB or MVD senior officers.

When looking at the right background for the role, a head of security responsible for recruiting security managers to serve in some of the most challenging oil industry environments in the world sums the situation up quite succinctly. “What we are looking for is security professionals who have highly developed softer skills. The technical stuff can always be taught.”

Many is the security manager who has taken up post and become frustrated with their inability to dictate the imposition of what appear to be logical, cost-effective and risk commensurate security measures...

Seamless integration needed

Security management shouldn’t be seen as something esoteric, covert and – from the workforce’s perspective – threatening. A well-known head of security for an international manufacturing company explains: “The security function must be seamlessly integrated into the business. You know you have it right when your non-security colleagues no longer regard you as the security manager but as a businessman who just happens to have security as his or her specialism.”

For those fresh out of the armed services or police and seeking to transfer their leadership traits to the corporate sector, that particular statement demonstrates the need for considerable additional development in acquiring relevant core business skills. Nobody knows that better than the author of the previous quote, a former army officer who ranks the importance of developing his own and his subordinate managers’ pure business skills on a par with their personal development as security professionals.

Another security manager adds: “Most of all I’m a marketeer. My job is to market the concept of security risk management. I need to understand finance as this is the language of business and persuasion.”

An essential requirement of many corporate security management posts is to manage the capital and expenses budgets, and then to demonstrate to the Board of Directors – both convincingly and logically – how expenditure in their own part of the business has a positive effect on the profitability of the company’s other functions.

Lacking in credibility?

In the UK at least, the Achilles Heel of the security discipline can sometimes be the lack of credibility of the profession in the eyes of our non-security colleagues due to the fact that, unlike many other businesses, over half of all operational security managers in this country don’t possess a University degree. Futhermore, of those who do very few hold specialist degrees in security management.

Of course, it’s well known within the industry (and without) that there are no standard professional qualifications required to become a security manager. Paradoxically, the only truly international and widely-recognised qualification – namely the ASIS International CPP examination (‘Why should you become a CPP?’, SMT, March 2004, p51) – can be taken only after several years spent working in the security profession. This denies what is a highly useful qualification to any direct entrants to the industry.

The ability to not only plan effectively, but also to respond quickly, appropriately and decisively to unexpected and challenging circumstances is a key requirement for a good many security management posts

Even the new ASIS International ‘Physical Security Professional’ qualification requires candidates to demonstrate at least five years’ experience in the security field.

Degrees are available, but in the UK at least many employers agree that the existing programmes (which are usually either criminology or risk management-based) still have some way to evolve before they can be considered as a true reflection of current commercial security management practice.

Of concern (to myself in particular as a long-time student on one such Masters degree programme) are the views expressed within academia about the profession. To quote one current head of a UK-based security management Masters degree programme: “The security field is dominated by the macho culture of strong action against the quiet reflection demanded by risk management tasks”. A comment which may well be appropriate to door supervisors, but which serves as a wholly inaccurate description of today’s typical corporate security manager.

Another prominent former MSc programme director took the argument a stage further in a recently published paper, challenging the legitimacy of security management to call itself a profession. Views which are hardly conducive to partnership with enterprise!

Assuming total responsibility

The ability to not only plan effectively, but also to respond quickly, appropriately and decisively to unexpected and challenging circumstances is a key requirement for a good many security management posts. Implicit in this is the need to select an individual who’s capable of taking (and willing to assume) full responsibility for his or her own actions. Those considering entering the profession in what is now an ever-increasingly litigious climate would do well to bear this in mind.

In the future, it’s conceivable that security managers who take wrong decisions which inadvertently result in harm to people may have to defend themselves against a charge of ‘negligent failure to plan’. This point was first emphasised by prominent City barrister Mark Scoggins at IFSEC 2001, and reiterated at the 2003 ASIS International European Conference by Bruce Blyth, an internationally famous authority on risk and crisis management and erstwhile advisor to the FBI.

In particular, organisational responses to terrorist attacks – whether against buildings or travelling members of staff – are likely to come under more rigorous scrutiny as the years pass by. The scope for litigation against the practising security manager is widening.

In this day and age, corporate concerns are now seeking to recruit security managers who have the ability to analyse and exhibit the propensity for self-criticism and reflection – and who are readily prepared to accept blame and criticism wherever it’s due.

David Cresswell CPP is managing director of ARC Training International (www.arc-tc.com)