It’s a client’s responsibility to ensure fair play and pay when it comes to contract guarding, writes Nicholas Stephenson, Group Security Manager at DIY retail chain MFI.
From the November retail supplement.
Many firms in the UK utilise the services of manned guarding companies, but how many of these firms ensure that the personnel contracted to them are treated fairly? Outsourcing is here to stay, but though outsourcing may remove the annual administrative and expense tasks of payroll and other welfare issues, it does not and cannot remove the moral obligation to ensure that outsourced personnel are treated fairly.
How many firms in the UK insist in their tendering process for a MINIMUM hourly rate for those individuals contracted in? How many firms don’t really care and think that it is not their responsibility? How many firms only look at the lowest cost when employing outsourced manned guarding companies?
An old saying is just as relevant today as it was years ago – ‘if you pay peanuts you get monkeys’! How many UK firms have security practitioners in place to safeguard their assets, and by assets I mean their people as well? Too often contract negotiations for manned guards are left to facilities, or human resources, or indirect procurement specialists. All these, though specialists in their own field, seem to be driven by the ‘lowest cost’ mentality when it comes to procuring the services of contract guards.
We need to get away from this extremely dangerous concept and return to ‘best value’, which does not necessarily equate to ‘lowest cost’. Lowest cost provides a false sense of security and in our field can lead to far higher costs in the long run. As those who have duty of care responsibilities to employee, customer, visitor and contractor groups, moving away from best value can have disastrous consequences.
And for those who have read and understood Maslo’s hierarchy of needs, until the lowest need (pay) is looked after satisfactorily then all other needs are held in abeyance. When this lowest need is not satisfied then we end up in situations where we have dissatisfied employees and/or contract personnel – and where those contract personnel are security officers responsible for safeguarding our assets then we are at risk. So clients of security services – please ensure that a fair rate of pay for the security officers forms part and parcel of your tender document. And suppliers of security – make this fair rate of pay part and parcel of your commitment to your clients.
