Is it worth out-sourcing uniformed retail security? writes Richard Burnell, pictured.
The cost of crime to the retail sector is currently running at £1.1 billion per annum. About £800 million of this is directly attributable to customer theft, with a further £117m being lost through fraud. These figures clearly make tough reading for retailers, who like many business are struggling to remain competitive in a stagnant economy. Over £200m was spent in 2009/2010 on trying to stem these losses and one of the most popular preventative measures that retailers used was uniformed security officers. <br><br>Whilst all major retailers in the UK directly employ loss prevention experts, few run an in-house programme of uniformed security officers, instead seeking to out-source this specialist function to a private contractor. There are plenty of security companies in the market, claiming to offer quality retail security services; the question for retailers is simple, do these contract security personnel represent value for money?<br> <br>From my own experiences working for one of the largest security companies in the UK, recruiting hundreds of security staff for contracts with major high street retailers, there are some serious limitations in being able to find staff who live up to the ‘quality’ label, that retail customers are promised by security sales managers. <br><br>Expectations have been set high, a new national retail contract is coming on board and owing to the outgoing company’s poor performance there are scores of vacancies that need filling. The first problem that a security contractor has in retail recruitment is the average quality of applicants. Most applicants can be classified in to one of three groups; those with some retail security experience but change jobs every six months or so; those with no retail security experience but a stable career history and finally those with no retail security experience and an unstable career history. Rarely does an applicant come along with good retail security experience and a stable employment history, I’ll offer insight as to why this is later. <br><br>Each of these classification of candidate brings unique problems. The first group of applicants, with retail security experience but an unstable career history are difficult to recruit, owing to British Standard pre-employment security screening. I’ll spare you the gritty details of vetting requirements, but it is suffice to say that someone who has had ten jobs in the last five years is both expensive and difficult to recruit. The second problem is that once the officer is fully vetted and finally employed, their employment history suggests that they will leave after six months, usually for a slightly higher pay rate or better working hours elsewhere. This means that the cost incurred in employing them is high and the likely return on the investment is low. <br><br>As a result, private security company may look at the other types of candidate widely available to fill vacant retail posts. What about the candidate with no experience and no career stability? Unsurprisingly, these candidates will rarely gain employment as they usually require costly SIA training, extensive vetting and probably won’t last long in the business. They are also high cost and high risk. <br><br>This only leaves one type of applicant remaining, who in my experience will form a large proportion of the officers that are sent to retail assignments. These are the candidates with no retail security experience and a stable work history. In recent years especially, these candidates are often in possession of an SIA licence, on application, obtained through the JobCentre after a previous job redundancy. <br><br>It is easy to employ them because they move quickly through the vetting process and can be brought in to the business at very low cost. The problem is that they know absolutely nothing about the retail business or retail security. In my experience, it is not uncommon that, simply owing to their instant availability, these staff can find themselves quickly employed and thrust on to the shop floor of a high street retailer with no idea about what it is they are there to do. Clearly this is not conducive to quality customer service. <br><br>The way the security company gets away with providing so many staff like this is actually quite simple. Some retail store managers are passionate about security and have their finger on the pulse. However, many see security as a lesser part of their job and as long as the officer who attends is of smart appearance and punctual, they take little or no interest in the contracted security officer that they are sent. With careful ‘operations management’ inexperienced security officers can be deployed to a store, and spend eight hours patrolling the sales floor without the faintest idea of what they are looking for, and without anyone of significance noticing. This leaves one obvious question; where are the good applicants with the skills and motivation to work in retail security? <br><br>Over the course of the last two decades, retail has moved from being a nine to five industry in to a 24-seven, operation. Retail security officers are now expected to work late evenings, nights and weekends as standard. These shifts involve them dealing with far higher levels of stress and aggression than they could otherwise encounter if they were assigned to a ‘static’ security contract. <br><br>Put bluntly, there are far easier and safer locations for security officers to work at, for only slightly less money per hour, than a twenty four hour supermarket. Once upon a time retail security was worth doing, as the higher levels of aggression encountered in the job were compensated for by the day-time hours and the slightly higher rates of pay. Nowadays, there may still be a slightly higher average pay-rate for retail security, but once the anti-social working hours are factored in, many experienced officers would rather work in a corporate location instead.<br><br>This culture shift, requiring retail security officers to work late evenings and nights has also had a second effect, depriving the industry of many good staff. Twenty years ago ‘door supervisors’ could traditionally work a full time retail job during the day and still work the doors at pubs and clubs in the evening. These staff knew and understood retail and were excellent at dealing with conflict. <br><br>Now, it is an either-or proposition. Professional door supervisors can not hold down a full-time retail post as the hours that they are required to work clash with their door work. As the door work is considerably better paid, this former source of well trained, high quality, retail security staff is no longer widely available to retail security companies. As you can see, these factors leave retail security companies with little option other than to bring in a high volume of untrained staff in to the retail sector. They are the only widely available labour source who are cost effective to employ in the time-scales required. The question is, does it matter? Can the skills these untrained staff need to know, be taught on the job? <br><br>Yes, they can, is the short answer to this but it is unlikely to happen to a reasonable standard in practice. This is simply a question of money. Margins are so tight in the manned guarding sector that any significant training (beyond SIA training) for uniformed retail security officers is not commercially viable. Officers may get a day or half a day’s training input from their company, however, the retailer’s own staff will often be far more alert and aware of retail security issues, than the allegedly ‘specialist’ officer, brought in through a contractor. <br><br>Anyone who has ever worked in a retail environment will attest to the variable quality of contract security officers, who are supplied by private security companies. The simple truth is that a large proportion of the retail security staff in the market are unskilled and inexperienced, far less so than the retailers own ‘non-security’ staff. <br><br>In summary, If the only pre-requisite for retail security is a uniformed visual deterrent, then the private security sector can certainly meet that need; whether this represents real value to the retailers bottom line or not is another question. If however, the value of uniformed retail security is measured in terms of improved loss prevention or improved staff safety through the use of ‘security specialists’, then the contracted model of uniformed security is not equipped to seriously meet this need. <br><br>Given this fact, retailers could possibly achieve better value for money by investing their manned guarding spend elsewhere, or by re-appraising what they hope to achieve by using contracted uniformed security in the first instance. If the current model (and pay rates) for out-sourcing uniformed security officers remains unchanged, it seems likely there will continue to be a shortage of skilled, uniformed retail security officers in the near future. Perhaps retailers should seriously review whether this common place approach to loss prevention, still does make a cost-effective difference to their business, especially in such hard financial times.
