From our November 2002 issue.
We talk to a man three weeks and three months into a UK security management job to see what he makes of the change of sector – from brewery to retail security – and the change of scenery – from Jamaica to London.
Nicholas Stephenson is three weeks into his new job in the UK as Head of Loss Prevention for music retailer Tower Records. It’s a drizzly cool day in July. Welcome to England. “I’m enjoying it,” he says – referring surely to his work rather than the weather. His previous job was in Kingston, the capital of Jamaica, responsible for security at the Red Stripe brewery, part of the Diageo drinks empire, formerly Guinness. Responsibilities included site and island-wide depot security (liaising with the police to keep gangs from breaching the perimeter security to steal beer, or empties with return value) and looking after western business people sent by the company to Jamaica (meeting them at the airport, doing a security survey of their residences, showing them the ropes about driving and which parts of the city to avoid). Naturally there is much learning to be done – about the law (though Jamaica as a former British colony bases its legal system on the UK’s), about UK conditions (though Nicholas has worked here before) and about the job. In these first weeks he has begun to network already; he talks to his predecessor at Tower, Robert McAllister, who has gone to Westminster Council, and Bob Hancock, the former senior Metropolitan Police man now chairman of Ex-Police in Industry and Commerce who as a Guinness security adviser has done work worldwide for the drinks multi-national. Nicholas recalls how in Jamaica he had a network, of informants, of other security managers and others: “That’s something I have to build up, something I am trying to fast-track.”
Meeting staff
Nicholas has just met security staff at Tower’s flagship Piccadilly store in central London – having already gone around stores incognito, jotting down the good things, notes on staff deportment and customer service, where some coaching of staff is called for. The aim is to team-build. “I like building teams, getting one on one. I believe strongly in management by walk-about, and basically working with people, showing you can do the job.” How then does he see the job panning out? In terms of building a team, not just for loss prevention but customer service. “I see that happening within … I don’t have time to waste.” He feels that UK retailers are customer-unfriendly to the point of indifference and sees merit in security staff as meeters and greeters. He does not want wilting flowers. “When there is a crisis, 9.5 times out of ten everyone looks to the security team for guidance.”
To arrest or not to arrest
Fast forward to mid-October, and Nicholas is still enjoying it – London, the UK, and meeting people not just in the security industry but generally. But he does have some words of criticism because of the crime he has found in the UK. He begins by picking up on the Home Office advice to retailers regarding arrests, that in a nutshell stressed the reasons for not arretsing shoplifters, except as a last resort. Nicholas says that his initial thought was to agree with the Home Office: “But what happens? You don’t arrest people, you ban them from the store, and they tell their friends, because all of a sudden they realise that they aren’t going to be arrested.” Tower began arresting shoplifters, and Nicholas reports a dramatic decrease in shoplifting attempts.” He has praise for going down the civil recovery route. “It had been used at the Birmingham store for a while, but we hadn’t used it in London, so we started to use it. I think it’s a good system. At least there’s a follow-up, so that eventually someone will serve a notice on them [the shoplifters] so you are hitting them in their pocket.”
Surprised by crime
What has surprised him about the last few months? “The crime, the levels of crime.” Yes, he was used to crime in Kingston – “it’s a lot more violent there” – but he was surprised, and saddened, by drug-related crime, by addicts funding their habits. He adds: “I am used to a society where gun crime is regular and it’s disturbing to see an escalation in gun crime in the UK.” Tower in Piccadilly is open seven days – from 9am to midnight, Monday to Saturday. Nicholas reports that the mornings tend to be a quieter time from the loss prevention point of view; attempted thefts come more at 3pm to 5pm. He adds that when the store has reason to exclude someone – maybe not for anything arrestable, and perhaps not if the suspect has been caught with anything – Tower will go to rival music retailers with descriptions of the suspects. Most times, the other retailers will say that they know the person too. Sharing things with other retailers in their sector, being a good neighbour, is in the interests of all. Similarly, Nicholas recalls that through ASIS corporate security managers and the owners and managers of contract security companies have meetings where they share information and discuss issues of common interest.
One to one
How has his routine changed as he got into his job? “Initially I had to do one to one, day by day, management by walkabout, coaching people, assisting people. I have now been able to reduce that and concentrate on updating things like emergency procedures, business continuity plans. Very much like Jamaica, I find that businesses might have an emergency procedures document but it hasn’t been updated. What I am putting in place is to ensure that you have a responsible person whose function once a year would be to update these kinds of documents.” As Tower’s Piccadilly store is in the very centre of London – facing Eros – a bomb scare need not be in the store itself to affect trading; it could be an alert on the Tube. Nicholas is pleased that the loss prevention team was instrumental recently in evacuating the Piccadilly branch – three floors and a mezzanine – in two minutes and 38 seconds. (It proved to be a false alarm – a customer left a bag behind, and returned very apologetically.)
Excellent police
What of police response if they are called? Nicholas desribes responses from West End Central police station as excellent. “All our security team have been trained in writing statements so normally by the time the police arrive there is a well-written statement which helps the police. I have very high praise for the English policeman – I think they are doing a very difficult job with limited resources, and they aren’t getting the support of people in the community.” On that point, Nicholas finds it disturbing that law-abiding people tend not to want to get involved if they witness, say, street crime. He thinks that the ‘Redcaps’ – private security patrollers of the West End, from the New West End Company consortium – and community support officers are a good idea, if they are supported by the police, and supervised.
Nicholas picks up on a phrase of Chris Smith’s; the security man at Deutsche Bank featured in our September issue spoke of security not yet being a profession. Nicholas tends to agree, but adds that it is high time to steer the industry towards professionalism. Security is on its way to being recognised as a profession, he feels, when it is offered as a degree course at university. In that respect, Jamaica is within the orbit of both the United States – and the CPP qualification of ASIS – and the more essay-based courses of British universities. Nicholas’ successor at Red Stripe for instance has just completed a distance learning course at the Scarman Centre, Leicester University. (Nicholas gained a degree in accounting at the age of 38 – he has not used it as an accountant, but reports he audit side of the degree has been of great use.)
