A mixed bag of views has come from a survey for the SIA on the impact of licensing on contract guards.
Few suppliers can pass on any let alone all the costs associated with licensing. And as for the benefits of regulation hoped for before the regime came in – such as higher pay and better conditions, and lower turnover – views on whether they’ve arrived are mixed, according to the report. And industry opinion is divided as to whether the public sees guards any more respectfully.
Licensing has had a mostly positive effect among security guards suppliers’ perception of their staff; likewise operatives have ‘generally positive’ views of badging.
“Opinion of the impact licensing has on the skill levels of staff is mixed however, as half of Suppliers disagreed that licensing affects the skill levels of their staff, and the majority required at least some of their security guards to undertake further training beyond what is required to become SIA licensed (often for first aid or physical intervention training).”
As for who has been paying for the £245 badge application fee, and renewals, a little over two in five operatives claimed to have paid all of the costs of applying for or renewing their guard licence (and a quarter paid for their training), although on balance, most felt the cost was worth it. Just under half of guards have been subjected to some form of violence, while two-thirds of suppliers claimed that their staff have been subjected to verbal or physical attack. Guards are more likely to have been subjected to verbal assaults rather than physical attack; however many have been subjected to both. The report asked whether guards’ badge training should include first aid and/or physical intervention.
Some 200 security guard suppliers and 401 security guards were telephone-interviewed in March.
Three in five guarding suppliers (63pc) require their staff to be licensed before hiring them, although this is more prevalent among smaller organisations.
Near all suppliers (93pc) have incurred some additional cost due to licensing, for a variety of reasons.
As for pay, most guard respondents (74pc) claimed to be earning between £5 and £8 per hour, with a further 21pc earning between £8 and £10. Only 4pc of those interviewed claimed to be earning more than £10 per hour. Hourly wages of contract guards are typically lower than those of door supervisors, where half of those interviewed claim to be earning more than £10 an hour.
Since the beginning of 2008, almost a third of respondents (30pc) had changed employer, with a further 18pc considering doing so. Significantly, it seems that guards that have been subjected to some form of physical or verbal assault in the past are significantly more likely to have changed job, with 38pc of those suffering verbal assault, and 41pc suffering physical violence having changed employer since January 2008. Equally, those subjected to assault are also more likely to have considered switching employer, if they had not done so already. But in a third of cases – the cause most often given – a change in employer is outside the operatives’ control as their old company was taken over or sold. Where guards chose to leave, the main reasons were to earn more money, or due to having a bad experience with their old company.
For the full 56-page report visit the SIA website –
http://www.sia.homeoffice.gov.uk/Documents/research/sia_sg_impact.pdf
