A paradox of our time is that we have (as part of the sheer amount of stuff) ever more words that we can read, online and in print; and yet, how few of them are worth our (finite) time! Apart from Professional Security Magazine, of course! writes Mark Rowe.
One of the few other outstanding magazines in the English-speaking world is Monocle, begun by Tyler Brule. My definition of outstanding is that not only the words and pictures are interesting, and never presume on the reader’s time – every word and image is well-considered. A publication has something more ineffable: a tone, a sense of conversation with the reader, that there’s something agreed and agreeable. With Monocle, it’s that we’re all liberal, we (you, I and Tyler Brule and Monocle staff) appreciate (and can afford) the finer things in life, whether timber furniture from Finland, a leather bag from Hermes or Francophone comic books (to quote from the December-January edition, number 169).
The editor Josh Fehnert has written a half-page article, ‘Happy to help’, that both sums up the ethos of Monocle and is relevant to the private security industry. Fehnert writes in praise of good service, that so much of Monocle revolves around (such as, when served coffee; Monocle has a cafe in Marylebone). He praises the Swiss ‘silver service’ and hospitality schools, and notes other countries that excel at service (Monocle is nothing if not internationalist).
With wisdom he points to the difference between ‘the crisp sincerity of someone who is happy to help’ in Japan, and ‘the kind of subservience that can pass for five-star service in parts of the Gulf’. A year-old story comes to mind here. One of UK private security’s finest exports, a young woman who’s able and hard-working, took rare time off to attend the football World Cup in Qatar; and saw the England-France quarter-final. She got talking with one of the stewards. A superviser came over and asked her; was the steward bothering her? Not at all. The exchange did serve to show how security and service generally is in the oil-rich Arabian countries. Typically, it’s done by nationals from South Asia, that the local Arabs look down on. Besides at the World Cup, a tournament that the authorities there absolutely wanted to pass off without security scares, security at malls and airports and the like is lavish in terms of numbers. The guards are there to do as they are told and not to speak unless spoken to (and even that might land them in trouble).
To return to Fehnert: “Service shouldn’t be servile.” To leave Fehnert, there’s a dissonance – someone well-off, perhaps fabulously so compared to the person giving the service, is expecting the guard or hotel maid or receptionist to be (to quote Fehnert on waiters) ‘characterful and unflappable’. Fehnert correctly does make the case for service that can be an occupation to be proud of; while not equals economically, you can make eye contact, smile, crack and take a joke.
Fehnert deplores, also rightly, that service has become a dirty word, ‘work for low-paid, low-skilled and low-status people’. Yet, those providing services may have the last laugh – whereas the machines of the Industrial Revolution put cloth spinners and weavers, and farm labourers, out of work, AI is making redundant financial analysts, accountants and auditors, maybe doctors and lawyers; the higher-paid and higher-status, supposedly higher-skilled professionals.
To take self-service check-outs at supermarkets as an example: yes, they have done away with many jobs, leaving only one or two to look after several self-service points instead of perhaps four or five staffing tills; yet the one or two still working have to do more with the public, whereas much of the work at the check-out was merely mechanical, inputting numbers into a till or scanning a barcode. We now have the spectacle of Amazon Fresh stores, supposedly doing away with human staff and check-outs altogether, that have a SIA-badged officer on the door.
If automation ruthlessly does away with all jobs except those that need the human touch – service, in a word – maybe service will get better status and pay. Where will this leave door and other private security, and the police? AI cannot arrest anyone, nor stop someone from entering a pub if they cannot show proof of age but try to walk in anyway. Good service as defined by Monocle makes all the difference between a door superviser who unsmilingly grants or denies entry, and one that has a cheery word (whatever the weather – or rather, the weather serves as the unfailing topic of conversation) and can advise on taxis.
Surely the helpful security person feels better about themselves, besides the person served. The patrolling security officer in a shopping mall or on a high street, if hired by a business improvement district, is more likely to be asked directions (above all in London) or a tip about the nearest good place to eat. That won’t be part of any contract or site instructions, but makes all the difference to a visitor (how to translate that helpfulness into measurable value; there’s the rub). UK private security, for all its beating itself up, does the basics of protecting assets reasonably well. Who’s teaching, raising at tender stage, or even acknowledging, the value of service.
