Stuart Lowden, MD of guarding contractor Wilson James, gave a personal view on where guarding is now, and where do we go from here, a couple of years after licensing came to the sector. And where does the sector want to go?!
In a light-hearted opening, Stuart suggested that those attending were (in a reference to the Star Wars films) more like Jedi Knights than (unnamed!) Dark Lords. "How do we move our industry forward, into something we are genuinely proud of?" he asked. He asked whether the industry practitioners had the appetite for change: "I am afraid the SIA, however hard it tries, doesn’t have a hope in hell if the industry does not want to change." Much of the guarding industry is about perception, he went on. "And there is a negative cycle about how our industry is perceived and what happens thereafter. So we have a perception within our industry that we employ low-skilled people, that we are a necessary evil, that we do not have a great image and we are not seen as professional as perhaps other industries. That drives the buying process, and currently very often the buying is a grudge purchase; it is price driven, and very often prescriptive: how many hours, what kind of training. As a result, the buyer gets what he deserves." That is, a cycle of long officer working hours, low pay, and low training and ‘harsh and reactive management’. Not surprisingly, there is high staff turnover, and people do not go the extra mile, and guard managers are harassed and fire-fighting – which reinforces the perception of guarding. Low quality, low price, and more low quality, a cycle we have to break, Stuart Lowden said. <br><br>The positive cycle, he went on, has to start somewhere: whether it’s with competitive wages; modern, ‘non-Victorian’ working practices – not 56 or 70 hours a week; broad training, rather than what’s needed for the job; or a different style of management, ‘where we are actually supporting our people on site, motivating them, monitoring them, not just always kicking them up the backside, because they fail to turn up on time’. And then there is a chance to reduce the staff attrition and give training, knowing the member of staff will stick and can add value. "We can become more customer-focused, we can sit at front of house and actually be proud of the service we deliver. And we can come across as much more professional than we are today. As a result you alter the buying process because suddenly we are an important purchase, not a grudge purchase." He suggested that ‘we’, people in the guarding sector, get exactly what we deserve as an industry. "You cannot change the industry based on 56, 60, 70 hour [a week] working practices; nobody in their right mind would join this industry by choice. Then you can invest in the people. The more you invest, the more they tend to stick." One interesting by-product of the licensing process, he suggested, was that by spending more time with staff and giving a bit more training, staff turnover reduced. "Three is no question, the more you can put into your workforce, the more they are likely to stick. We have as an industry to start putting management back." As for tenders, he described e-bidding as ‘an absolute disgrace’: "How can you select on the basis of an e-auction? Or, we have given the view that they [tenderers] can do it, because we are all like a tin of beans. Well, I don’t think we are." <br><br>He called for selling to clients that guarding is about more than giving bodies, if a client wants a service: "We do need the help of the SIA in this," Stuart Lowden said, which significantly was the first time he mentioned the authority, well into his talk. "But we need the help in the right way. We need a much stronger ACS … we almost have to leave certain buyers with nowhere else to go but to buy quality. That must mean working proper hours." <br><br>Moving on to the SIA regulation, he called for proper, robust and visible policing; the fact that perception existed that there was not robust policing of ACS undermined willingness to commit to it. But, he added, it could only work if there was an element of self-help: "We have to start working with each other." He closed: "We have to decide, are we in the people game or the commodity game. Some are comfortable in the commodity game; I am not. Finally, the key question for all of us. Do you really have the appetite for change, because change will bring with it a lot of pain over the next three or four years, to create this change, but if we ever want to change our industry we need to be willing to take on that degree of change; to create an industry we can be genuinely proud of."
