When ‘just enough’ is never enough’ is never enough

After three years of planning and several months of challenging implementation, the main players in the guarding sector are now beginning to make genuine progress in support of the Security Industry Authority’s (SIA) commitment to fully regulating the private security industry.

While few guarding suppliers would argue that the drive towards licensing has been anything other than costly and somewhat frantic, it has presented us all with a marvellous opportunity to introduce a standardised training programme that, in turn, will support an improvement in service delivery and enhanced perceptions of the industry among the customer base.

The opportunities presented by regulation permit the industry to review its current procedures while assisting employees with their development into true professionals in the sector. Recognising and nurturing potential in your employees is of course laudable, but that process must go hand-in-hand with training and support. Organisations need to ensure that their members of staff are provided with the kind of training that not only assists them to progress and develop in their chosen sphere, but which also enhances the overall service they can offer the client base.

In the short term, we have upgraded our own facilities such that they could be officially approved as training centres for the new four-day Part I (Basic Job Training) and Part II (Communication and Conflict Management) courses required to be completed as part of the SIA’s procedures.

Management and motivation

People are at the core of the guarding industry. The effective management, motivation and career development of staff is crucial to success, particularly so at a time when many clients are beginning to – mistakenly – believe that the increased introduction of technology-based systems can directly replace (or reduce) their need for security guarding.

This has not been helped by the fact that most suppliers of security guarding services have been guilty of devaluing the solutions delivered by their people by aggressively focusing all efforts on winning new customers while falling down on service delivery.

That fact was recently highlighted when I spoke with a prospective customer of Initial, himself a senior in-house security manager within a multinational financial institution. This professional told me: “The image of the guarding industry has now become one of a sales manager visiting a potential client armed with just a pen, a notepad and a calculator, in addition to a fierce determination to find a way of offering a discount against the incumbent security solutions provider whether the client’s service level would suffer or not!”

Clearly, the industry’s aggressive sales approach – in tandem with the ongoing desire to promote from within – has meant that many service providers have failed to grasp the vital issue of employee development. Is it really any wonder, then, that all-too-often the security officers responsible for delivering our services have a greater affinity with the client than with us as their employers?

Such ‘organisational drift’ makes it all the more important for suppliers who are seeking to reduce their staff turnover and improve motivation to commit to providing all of their employees with ongoing training and support.

Raising our game

The effective management, motivation and career development of staff is crucial to success, particularly so at a time when many clients are beginning to – mistakenly – believe that the increased introduction of technology-based systems can directly replace (or reduce) their need for security guarding

While it’s true to say that the SIA’s drive towards regulation has forced the industry to focus on training, the key issue here is whether or not the setting of a list of minimum standards really supports the ongoing development of staff? And does it really represent good value for those who ultimately pick up the bill (ie the clients)?

Surely, by merely providing training that allows operatives to attain the minimum standards we are foregoing an ideal opportunity to actually raise the skills and confidence of our people? Should we not be grasping this chance to collectively look at up-skilling and developing members of staff that operate our contracts, thus enabling them to share knowledge with their peers while affording them the experience to assist in the nurturing of their own careers?

How can a contract managers or sales manager relate to an individual client’s operation if they are not taught the skills and allowed to gain the knowledge that will assist them in developing a given account? Without such training, what chance is there of them ensuring that the client benefits from optimum service levels?

Our answer has been the introduction of a formal Contract Manager Development Programme that takes contracts managers past security training to look at related and vitally important area such as administration skills, portfolio management, communication skills, business retention issues and business development scenarios.

At Initial Security, we firmly believe that if national providers such as ourselves are really serious about raising standards, then we must be prepared to invest heavily in staff training as individuals rise through the ranks. An immediate and positive outcome for the company arising from our own scheme is that it has motivated officers to want to pursue their careers in the industry with us.

Tailor-made client packages

The very fact that our contract managers, sales people and indeed all of our employees are trained to understand how each of our clients operate – and to identify the risks their businesses may face – enables us to offer a tailor-made customer package. To date, the feedback from clients has been hugely encouraging, indicating that we are on the right track.

While regulation presents us all with the starting point in terms of being able to develop and introduce a fully-trained and qualified workforce, we as a company have fully embraced the benefits of ongoing and specialist training.

For us, this has proven to be one of the most positive ways in which we could have invested in our people and raised training standards beyond the minimum.