Mark Rowe continues his consideration of women in security with a question – action or conversation?
It’s the choice for all who would change the world. Do you talk about it, or seek to do something about it? Conversation is action, of a sort. An installation company chief said something to me recently that I strongly believe in, that we make choices all the time – what we eat (cheapo and fast, or something else) and what else we buy or where we bank (online or from a physical high street). So it is for men and women alike at work. They can choose to work for a toxic workplace or one that makes crazy demands on their time and energy, and stick or it, or go to work for companies that ‘get it’.
Likewise those higher up the chain of command can look to partner with like-minded firms that ‘get it’, whether in offering opportunities to women, or (because men appreciate it too) flexibility in working hours or incentives to learn. Such things are not only the right things to do, but they make business sense, ultimately. You cannot measure loyalty but you can put a financial value on staff retention (if a business truly cares about such things or is even able to measure them).
Some changes, then, can happen in each workforce and workplace; men and women alike can vote with their feet. Some things can better be resolved at industry level. How to name jobs, for example, to show how full the responsibility is? A relatively young women this year described her role as ‘the glue’ that kept a large and important contract going. A job title of coordinator or even contract manager might not reflect her skill – in management as much as in the providing of security.
The brief prime ministership of Liz Truss may have disproved any belief that women can do a better job than men or have better people skills. Women in security and generally will say that they may be naturally better at seeing one another through mental health issues, whether personal (things that people bring to work whether they mean to or not) or work-related (the extreme loneliness of a night receptionist or the all too busy and verbally abused front of house officer). Maybe women are only relatively better, for men may bottle things up or handle it by drinking – which may only bring further health and social problems.
It’s striking how many things that women in security talk about overcoming can be as true for men, such as having the confidence to overcome ‘imposter syndrome’. Women and men in security management alike say how useful it is to have been a security officer, in the postroom or loading bay (‘I would never ask anyone to do anything I wouldn’t do myself’, one woman said).
Striking also that what women in security wish to see improved in their workplaces, applies to other places. Much was said in March at the diversity event, an idea of Dawn Holmes’ and arranged by Phelim Rowe (no relation). One remark that stuck with me was from a non-security sector woman, from the law, who wanted (like so many younger people in the workforce) more of a work-life balance, and who was well aware of the unfairness. The young watched the older (male) higher-ups leave on a Friday afternoon to make for their cottages, evidently feeling entitled to. (See the audit firm EY for a recent report on lack of progress of women into key executive roles and any increase driven by boards appointing female Non-Executive Directors (NEDs) to comply with targets).
I think also of an always-informed security recruitment man who said that the main thing young applicants ask is; how much extra holiday can I buy? For the security manager of either gender, the further question has to be; how to ensure that the team has a good work-life balance, also? To be mindful of staff who have children, or elderly parents to look after, sometimes having to drop everything for a crisis? To offer to swap a day off? Women point out that they feel they have to give ‘110 per cent’. Yet even workaholics need to take breaks.
The wish, then, is not to skive, but for some necessary time off from an otherwise high-performing team. Women and men alike have to decide; if an email comes through at 11pm, do you have to reply? Security is after all 24-7; and if you work for a multi-national, it will be the hours of business somewhere. Yet you need to switch off sometimes, if you are regularly working 12 hours and travelling. It’s important to turn the brain off, to refresh. Otherwise you may burn out.
‘You need to find allies and friends,’ one ‘woman in security’ said; and they don’t have to be women, just someone to speak to, because – when so often a security meeting only has one or two women in the room – it can feel lonely. The same woman said: “You always have to be on show, you have to laugh at their [male] ridiculous joke.”
Women are ticked off by things that might not occur to men – being called a girl; or having to explain their experience (which may be no less than the man’s).
While men in management and on the front line may work 60 hour weeks, women that do so speak of also having to ‘juggle’, and they don’t necessarily care for it if their male friends or partners don’t appreciate that, and ask them to shop for something while on the way home. Sometimes things won’t get done, ‘and if they don’t get done, it’s ok.’
Having quoted appreciatively in part one a Security Research Initiative report by Prof Martin Gill’s Perpetuity Research consultancy, here is another, from late 2020, ‘Understanding influences on security as a career/job choice: what those working in the security sector think’. As martin summed up: “People don’t join the security sector because they don’t know about it.” If so many men and women alike fall into security – shifting into it from another function in a business, or getting the idea from a friend already at work in security – that implies that it’s one thing to join the industry, as one of the ‘foot soldiers’; and another to progress in it.
Part three on this link.
