Interview with Ray Clarke, founder and former chief executive of SITO.
Q: How do you feel about the suggestion by David Dickinson that the SITO of the future will be more responsive to customer demands?
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Ray Clarke: SITO has invested significant effort over the years in working closely with its customers. The awards for product and customer service, forums such as the Education and Training Forums, Strategic Training Committees, Training Co-operatives, product development committees and customer surgeries speak for themselves and demonstrate that SITO was continually trying to involve the industry. Within the NTO movement, SITO had a reputation that was second to none for innovation and customer focus. There is always room to do better, and this was reflected in our ongoing work on business excellence and continuous improvement.
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As far as giving the industry what it wants is concerned, it is a sad truth that the majority of companies, both large and small, want the bare minimum that they can get away with. The publication of the SIA guidelines will inevitably re-define these minimums for some parts of the industry, but I believe that those expecting a new age of investment in staff and training will be sorely disappointed. Whilst Mr Dickinson’s rallying call at the SITO conference might have gone down well with some sections of his audience, let us hope that SITO does not lose its crusading zeal for improving training standards in the industry. After all, if SITO had been driven purely by what the industry said that it wanted in 1990, SITO would not exist today and the industry would have made little progress on training over the decade.
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Q: Some of the correspondence that we have received suggest that SITO set the training standards for the industry at a low level.
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RC: Of course entry standards for security officers and door supervisors are too low, but I think that our approach was a triumph for pragmatism over idealism. It took a great deal of effort and persuasion to move the industry to a position where it was providing entry level training over three days, of which two were in the class room and one on site. The howls of protest experienced when SITO tried to increase the classroom component in the manned services sector to three days were considerable. During the 1990s we successfully consolidated two days training as the norm, developed standardised materials, developed a network of trainers and implemented quality control systems for certification, all of which were absent from the industry in 1990. Without the statutory levers that the SIA now has to hand, I believe that we moved the issues as far as was possible within the prevailing environment.
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Your contributors view might be justified if that is where SITO had left the issue. However, the truth is that in most parts of the industry, occupational standards, training and qualifications were developed from entry to Masters Degree level, largely as a result of SITO’s efforts. Employers, employees and customers of the industry wishing to adopt higher standards than those contained within BS7479 had ample opportunity so to do.
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Q: Given the mixed response to your proposal to work with the cleaning industry in an SSC, do you regret making the proposal?
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RC: I have no regrets about making the proposal and it is unfortunate that the presentation of this issue has been somewhat over simplified. My job, when the new SSC structure was announced, was to find a series of relationships that would ensure that the security industry continued to have significant influence on vocational education at a national level. Those of us involved in the SITO Board at the time, were aware that SITO would not be able to become an SSC in its own right as the industry was viewed by the DfES as lacking the economic and strategic significance required to command its own SSC. Perhaps this view has now changed, but at the time the DfES gave a clear indication that a broader, facilities based SSC was likely to be their preferred option and as a consequence, the link with the cleaning industry was the obvious outcome. Furthermore, both the security and the cleaning industries suffered from many of the same skills issues, drew from a similar part of the employment market and that there were commonalities in respect of ownership and customer base.
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Despite the intellectual merits of the proposal, which had the support of the chairman and chief executive of the BSIA during the summer of 2001, it soon became clear that some parts of the security industry had difficulty with accepting the cleaning industry as a suitable strategic partner within a broader based facilities sector. In response I sought to modify the proposals, and by late November had managed to encourage the safety industry to participate in the embryonic SSC, titled S5C. Ironically, as a sector employing a large number of professionally qualified individuals, many within the safety industry initially expressed similar concerns about the security industry, as had been expressed by the security industry about cleaners. However, this was resolved through the structuring of the organisation, with separate operating companies for the security, safety and cleaning/facilities industries, of which SITO would have been one, operating as subsidiaries of S5C which in turn was designed to be the government facing strategic body. Each industry would have maintained its own unique and independent identity with training, certification, standards and industry relationships for the security industry being the responsibility of SITO. It was this proposal in December of 2001 that received the support of BSIA. The bid was written and SITO spent many months marking time, awaiting the establishment of the Sector Skills Development Agency (SSDA) and the publication of the mechanism by which S5C could be approved.
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With the regulation of the security industry, the SSDA naturally sought the endorsement of the SIA for the S5C proposal in May. Unfortunately, this was not forthcoming. Instead, the SIA concluded that the most appropriate response was to conduct a strategic review, the time frame for which was to seriously delay the development of SSC arrangements in the security industry. The suggestion in the November issue of Professional Security that I was not willing to countenance any option other than the proposal for S5C was not the case. Whilst I believed that the S5C proposal had the most to offer the industry, I had indicated that I was willing to debate the issue at the Sector Skills Strategy Group and was surprised, as arguably the best-informed individual in the industry on sector based education issues, not to be included in the group.
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Had the proposal for S5C been accepted by the SSDA, as was so nearly the case, the industry would have been in the driving seat for one of the UK’s biggest and most influential SSC’s, benefiting from additional government funding at both SSC and company level, improved local support and increased visibility. Far from reducing its voice with government and the education sector, the security industry would have been in a far stronger position.
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Q: Where do you believe the SSC debate will conclude?
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RC: I am not sure. However, it is apparent that the four options presented by Mrs Meacher at the conference are no longer options. The warning that I gave during the summer that the delays caused by the review would lead to a fragmentation of the S5C partnership and a consequent reduction in partnership options has come to fruition. The facilities and cleaning sectors have long since gone their own way, frustrated by the delays and the manner in which they have been treated by the security industry. The safety industry is also making its own arrangements. By March, most industries will have finalised their SSC partnerships, leaving the security industry with a limited range of options which is unfortunate, given its position in May 2002, when it was playing a leading role in defining those partnerships.
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To my mind, three options remain, an independent SSC, the security industry falling within the scope of Justice with the Police and Prisons Service, or no SSC representation for the sector whatsoever. All three options have problems, but of the three, the stand-alone option I would consider to be preferable. However, it is far from a forgone conclusion that it will be supported by the Sector Skills Development Agency. Even if it does gain their support, it is likely to cost the industry considerably more to maintain the SSC, as it will have relatively small sector coverage with a lower level of funding to maintain the same functions as a larger SSC. This was not a problem with the S5C option.
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The second option is a link within a Justice-based SSC, which would be the cheaper option for the industry and is more likely to be supported by the SSDA. However, such a link could result in the sector losing the influence that it had, and the loss of commercial sector focus as a result of operating within a public sector environment. More worrying still, is that some parts of the security industry might seek alternative SSC relationships, resulting in a fragmentation of SSC representation.
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The final option, no SSC representation at all, would reduce the opportunity for the industry to benefit from education sector driven initiatives, have a detrimental impact on the training delivery mechanism and also lead to the splintering of the sector, as some parts of the industry, particularly those not subject to the regulatory regime, seek SSC representation elsewhere.
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Q: Do you believe that SITO can be both trainer and qualifications body.
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RC: Yes, it has worked well for 12 years and of course that link between training and assessment is not peculiar within the UK education system, just look at the higher education sector. The issue for me is that it should be the role of the SIA to set standards, and the delivery of qualifications and training should be undertaken in a competitive environment within the requirement of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and various funding agencies. Prior to the launch of the SIA, the Home Office was always clear that it was not going to support monopoly provision of training or awards, a position that I supported on more than one public platform. The principle that the industry can choose its supplier and benefit from competitive pricing and customer service seems to me to be a fundamental requirement of the new system. If SITO or indeed any other body wishes to compete in the market, then restrictions should not be placed upon them other than that they are to meet the standard. I was always confident that SITO would compete well in such an environment. A far more telling conflict is in the manner in which public funds are accessed to support training. If public funding is available, and that is far from guaranteed given that Government generally expects employers to fund employee training when it is a requirement of trade, it should be made available to all training and qualifications suppliers in an equitable manner.
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Q: What do you consider to be the future of SITO?
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A: I have always had a very strong sense of the direction that SITO would take and until recently, believed that it would become the engine for a bigger and more influential SSC and a major player on the international stage. Now, I am as unsure as David Dickinson appeared to be in his speech to the conference. I hope that SITO retains its position as an influential sector based training body within the new SSC framework, develops its international lead and continues to be a class leading and innovative education company for the benefit of the wider security industry. The decisions that are taken over the next few months will be fundamental to whether this is possible and I will leave it to others to judge whether or not the SITO of the future builds upon the foundation that [former SITO chairman] Bob Rowan and I have played a large part in developing.
