A report of the annual SITO training conference, reported in our December 2001 print edition.
Does an area or ops manager need a security industry background’ How does he relate to those above and below him in the management chain; are his skills particular to security, or applicable anywhere’ And what is the point of talking about training when so many managers are fire-fighting – dealing with staff turning up late or not at all, or with dirty uniforms. Plus, those managers are dictated to by the bottom line and the promises of their company’s sales staff, also thinking of the bottom line, and selling to customers for whom security is a grudge purchase’ These were among the perennial guarding sector questions cropping up in the SITO discussion at the National Motorcycle Museum, Birmingham, on November 8, led by Jane McKenna, National Training Manager for guarding firm Chubb Security.
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Learning the hard way’
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She kicked off by saying: ‘A lot of people I speak to started as a security officer and worked their way up and had to learn the hard way, or by mistakes. I come from a non-security background. Some of my team are a mix from outside and inside the industry and I need both. The external people have brought in some really fresh ideas.’ Echoing her, one human resources manager of a security company, who joined the industry six months ago, with a manufacturing background, said that when his firm was bringing in an ops manager, prior knowledge of the security industry came pretty low in the list. Another end user commented: ‘If you don’t get people in from outside, you get in-breeding.’ The group rattled off ideal personal qualities for an ops/area manager – such as loyalty and creativity – before expanding on some of the real-world obstacles. Graham Hetherington, an in-house manager at The British Library in London, for example: ‘The number of operations managers I have heard saying, ‘I wish they hadn’t promised that’. It’s not something you should hear as a customer and I have heard it too many times. You know things are going wrong when rubbish guards turn up and you can’t get hold of the ops manager. We have all been there.’ Operations managers should ideally have even coaching and counselling skills, and identify training needs. Erez Sharoni, Head of Security at the University of Hertfordshire, pointed out that area managers may not carry the weight to carry out necessary changes: ‘A good manager can only work in an environment that is supportive.’ A Ministry of Defence attendee suggested that the group was only identifying generic managerial skills, applying anywhere. Erez Sharoni argued that we should look not just at generic skills, but the support for that manager – support which is often lacking in organisations. Erez said: ‘So many commercial companies are trying to cut each other’s throats. Managers may have necessary skills but don’t have enough support.’ Erez’s refrain was: the area manager may be able to recruit well, and analyse problems, but lacks the tools to fix those problems.
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Where do staff come from?
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Where are these ops and area managers coming from? Graham Hetherington asked – from the military police, or the shop floor’ Where does this ideal manager get his training’ He added: ‘Things like training go out of the window. You end up with half-trained people.’ For instance, if the contract guarding company never sends a correct invoice for the payroll, that means the end usre has to spend resources on querying it. Never mind whether the ideal operations manager exists, Graham asks – does the ideal guarding company exist’ A further question: how do you measure an area manager’s skills, and monitor the manager and his staff’ Key performance indicators may be whether you retain the contracts, and have a low labour turnover, but the group agreed that it’s difficult to assess an individual’s skills. Erez Sharoni added that an area manager looking after five or six sites may retain them because the core team is good. Does that manager need to know the names of all his officers’ It depends on the company, was the group’s response. The group wound up by agreeing that the area manager ideally has four skills – self-management, communication, motivational and problem-solving skills, all depending on support around this manager. One attendee asked if it were a case of ‘horses for courses’ – day to day security management not being the same as personnel, say. Did that make the idea of an overall security management a misnomer’
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Summing up
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Jane McKenna said that the ops manager’s skills should include presentational ones, because that manager would be speaking to clients to try to persuade them to use the company. The area manager should catch (and praise) staff when they are doing something right, which has a positive effect. If the manager learns his skills by being barked at, he will then bark – rather than developing managerial skills. Finally, there is the matter of whether you have enough time to go on those time management courses …
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SITO came in for stick at its annual training conference in Birmingham from delegates in the electronic sector. Members of a security systems workshop voiced their views to Tim Geddes, who has chaired the Security Systems Section of the BSIA for seven years and who told the conference that he intends to step down next year. Tim, of Yeoman Monitoring Services, reported on the workshop to the full conference. Some training providers do not know whether SITO is a competitor, or a national training organisation or a training provider, he said. Some alarm companies have turned to another national training organisation (NTO), the EMTA (Engineering and Marine Training Authority). SITO should be achieving higher standards for security engineers, workshop members argued. Tim Geddes reported also confusion over what SITO is, or wants to be, in the security industry; many companies felt guarded in sharing information with SITO, and would be more willing to share if SITO was an NTO and not commercial. A consensus in the workshop was that SITo should simply be an NTO, and there was a feeling that SITO did great work but was ruining it with its commercial-mindedness.
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Andy Walker, the former police officer who wrote the Safer Doors report on door staff, who recently became a director of door provider Capes UK, took the door superviser workshop. Andy, who jointly chairs the Safer Doors Forum, reported that some local authorities are insisting on door superviser qualifications for stewards of events, although events and door work at pubs and clubs are different. Some end users feel that SITO door training is too expensive, and want a minimum training time before door staff gain their badge – 16 hours, or two days. SITO’s basic job training course lasts 16 hours, while the NCFE’s two-stage course takes nine hours. The British Institute of Innkeeping also offers a door qualification. Much as Andy Walker told IFSEC 2000, the UK regulation of doors is a ‘mess’. The 60 per cent of local authorities that do run door registration schemes lack uniformity, Andy said. Badge fees range from £30 to £250; some councils only recognise the SITO, BII or NCFE courses. The workshop agreed that training bodies and trainers should be assessed, and that teachers of door supervisers ‘must know the door game’. Course content should be based on the British Standard BS7960, which was featured in our January 2000 issue.
