Mark Rowe visited the door security company Professional Security (no relation to Professional Security Magazine) at their head office in Leeds, and has written firstly about how the SIA approved contractor is looking to move from doors into guarding more generally; and secondly we spoke to the chief execs, Dave and Abby Fullerton. Here we round off with something maybe not the first thing that comes to mind about a security company; its marketing. Yet in a sector that’s looking to recruit and retain people, let alone the young with something about them, who have options, you’ve got to market yourself with some ingenuity and – dare we say it? – humour.
We’ve learned that Professional Security, well-known as a supplier to hospitality, is looking to make the work as appealing to women as men, and to students.
If, as security people will readily admit, few if any at school say, ‘I want to work in security when I grow up’, that implies Professional must get itself in front of students; most obviously at fresher’s fairs, when students are as likely as ever to pay attention, to something eye-catching, that will stick in the memory? Sarah Baugh is Professional’s Head of Marketing, who pulled together the ‘baked beans’ campaign. Practically speaking, it meant buying enough tins of beans to stack an imposing pile of them up at fairs, tearing off the labels and replacing them with Professional wrappers in orange, including a QR code for those interested in finding out more. And if the student didn’t take up a job in security, at least they had a tin of baked beans to eat. “They loved it,” Sarah recalls.
Sarah recently became a trustee of the EY Foundation, the charity and member firm of the auditors Ernst & Young (EY). The charity’s ‘Smart Futures’ scheme matches sixth formers with employers, whether in professional services like EY, tech or banking, the Metropolitan Police; or security companies (‘Secure Futures’). Whatever the employer, they mentor the teenager, show them the work, and pass on skills generally. One thing Sarah reports is that those going through the scheme hadn’t known the opportunities in security (it’s not all standing on pub doors).
Some summing up is in order, because although we were hearing about Professional for some hours, we got the sense that if anything we came away with even more to know. About social value, for example, something that Martin Woollam touched on. That can take many forms, done both because it’s the right thing for any business to do, and because customers at tender may ask what their suppliers are doing about ‘social value’, so that the end user can point to its suppliers as part of the buyer’s ‘social value’. Money is around in various pots for training; getting some, for example for training towards SIA licences, is not only a matter of knowing where the pots are but asking the right questions to open the pot. Professional like others is beginning to ask sustainability and other questions of its suppliers, such as uniforms: what happens to the clothing when its use is over.
Visit professionalsecurityuk.com.
Read also, if you started here – part one; and part two.
Pictured at Professional Security’s foyer, from left, guarding and events director Martin Leeder, head of marketing Sarah Baugh, commercial director new in 2024 Martin Woollam and magazine editor Mark Rowe.
