Recently we visited Professional Security, the SIA-approved guarding company at their base in Leeds (no relation to the magazine). Here’s the first part of our write-up, introducing the company. Now we turn to talent.
‘We don’t take everyone,’ they say.
Where other people say recruitment, Professional have a ‘Talent Team’. Commercial Director Martin Woollam says: “We search for talent; we don’t take everyone.” The same might be said of a long timer in the security and facilities sector like Woollam, as he began with Professional in late 2023. That thought must occur to him, for he bursts into laughter when he says: “I was quite proud to make the cut!” He recalls an all-day interview, to meet everyone in the place, to see if he would fit in with the culture (‘one of the reasons for me joining was the culture’).
Woollam went on to say how he was impressed by the passion of everyone he met, how they all knew the vision and values and were proud to execute them and the genuine desire to be the best. The values too were appealing; “Client First, Exceptional People, Always Winning and Enjoy the Journey – the latter one being a core reason for Woollam joining – having a company that has a value to “enjoy” their work. Quite unique and very powerful. This has led to the creation of an impressive Social Value Plan that he will be driving through the business and into new bids stressing the importance of the five key themes of the governments Social Value Model for procurement. Their social value plan is the bringing together of a suite over 30 initiatives to deliver demonstrable, tangible, and beneficial outputs for colleagues, client, and the environment. The consistency of message meant it was business as usual culture and not a pretence. One team member when asked how they would deal with the coverage of a difficult assignment stared him straight in the eye and said, “Because it won’t beat me and the team”.
The delivery of that line was so powerful you can’t help to be impressed. Now as with a country’s culture, defining it may be difficult. For a business, is it a style; the ‘way we do things around here’, both practical (the company provides weekly pay) and intangible (things that may be harder to put into words, and to take to market?). For the next year, the firm’s focus is on six core markets including transport, local government/BID/BRCPS, retail, sports, and leisure/events, bundled security solutions and wider FM Support. The strategy is clear, and targets set. The experience of the team means that they have an impressive ability and proven management expertise in these markets. With over 50 years of security management experience (both as in house and contractor status) between Woollam and Leeder overing these sectors it is clear to see why these have been chosen as their focus and why it will fill customers with confidence they are in safe hands with such proven competence.
CEO says
Professional Security joint CEOs are Dave and Abby Fullerton. ‘We have huge ambition for growth,’ Dave says, while aware that when growing, whether in terms of geographical reach or kinds of work, a company must not ‘delete their DNA’. “I really believe it can be done,” he says, “but I haven’t seen anybody do it yet, which is the exciting thing.” He talks in terms of the officer at the front end, with pride in appearance, and a feeling of kudos from working for Professional; as the ‘shop window’ for the customer: “You almost don’t need a sales team, if you have thousands of people selling your business for you.”
Dave is not the only one to have come into private security while a student – six years in his case, including his doctorate – by working as a door supervisor. The door security world desperately needed to be treated like a business, Dave reflects; not only so that the door staff felt looked after, but so that the non-security staff felt safer, and drinkers and other venue customers felt unintimidated too (and became return customers). It speaks volumes for the world of its own that is ‘the doors’ that Dave recalls a hostile first few years (‘no-one wanted a university graduate stepping into the door supervision world, which made me a lot more determined, actually’). Once he finished studying, the business grew, from local to regional to national (including by acquisition).
Dave sees the opportunities in guarding as vast and staying out of what he (like many others in the field) acknowledges is a ‘race to the bottom’ on price by some. Rather, he advocates paying ‘people the right rate; great people doing a great job, in a great environment, working for great clients. You can’t do that paying minimum wage.’ To leave Dave for a moment, apparel retailers, to name only one sub-sector, seem open to the idea of marrying the access control of the DS to keeping an eye on the shop floor, instead of a nightclub dance floor (and the two aren’t all that different, if you consider the background music in a store; and the sense of shopping for clothes as an event, in company). What’s intriguing is how the covid pandemic made it imperative for the marriage, from both sides: pubs and clubs locked down, and supermarkets in spring 2020 suddenly wanted marshals to enforce social distancing and mask-wearing and greet and manage conflict (as covered in the SIA licence training), and thereby reassure the (many) anxious shoppers. For Dave the praise of non-hospitality clients was eye-opening, and hence Professional started a stand-alone guarding division; ‘and it feels like it’s falling into place …. The market desperately wants something different’.
Dave and Abby were appointed as Board Directors of the industry body IPSA in 2020 and speak proudly of the IPSA gathering last autumn at the base of Mitie at The Shard.
The change to a more inclusive front line, implied in a different service, will include more women in the sector, which for Abby is a ‘ripple’ and a matter of ‘a long game’. The work towards more security women in the industry (Professional has a female forum) must reach the wider population, for them to see ‘there’s a phenomenal career for female security professionals’, Abby says: “We need to raise the profile of women in security.”
Click here for the final, part three: marketing.
Pictured at Professional Security’s foyer, from left, guarding and events director Martin Leeder, head of marketing Sarah Baugh, Martin Woollam and magazine editor Mark Rowe.
