Some security industry figures reflect on the year 2001.
Terry O’Neil, Managing Director of manned guarding auditors The Security Watchdog, welcomes the Security Industry Authority as a step forward in raising the perception of the industry in the public eye. ‘But we still have a long way to go,’ he adds. That staff have licences means nothing more than they do not have a criminal record. ‘We still have to lift this industry to a higher plane, and try to persuade clients and public bodies to trust them [security companies] to produce a good performance on the ground, and the only way to do that is to raise the wage rates and increase the benefits, so we are attracting the right people into the industry. No-one is seriously going to leave school and become a security officer voluntarily; they prefer to go into the police or the services or something that pays properly, and they have a proper laid out career path.’
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Jerry Hart, lecturer in security management at the Scarman Centre at the University of Leicester, commented on the terrorism of September 11 in our last issue. This time, he points out that security industry regulation tries to introduce minimum standards of character, ‘but does nothing for competence. So you can be the nicest, church-going, bumbling idiot of a security guard in the world.’ He says he does not have angst about people with a criminal record being in the security industry. There are people with a criminal record in the police ofrce and I don’t know of any research that correlates malpractice in the police with having a criminal reocrd or a previous conviction. So if someone as an adult was busted for marijuana or even some other petty offence, does that mean they are completely incapable of working in the security industry’ It sticks in my craw because I have met a lot of characters who may not have a criminal record but their sense of ethics is definitely open to question, and I have met poeople who have had to reflect on their behaviour and they have rehabilitated themselves.’ Will the security industry pay for regulation that checks competence as well as character’ Jerry Hart replies with a chuckle. He goes on to say: ‘Regulation was all about commercial imperatives, to drive out small competitors who are undercutting the big boys with their massive running costs.’ Jerry Hart argues that security is essential not only for an organisation, but for the products and services that the organisation offers and customers pay for – whether a car, a burger, or even a pub or phone conversation. Effective security within the organisation enhances the quality of the product. As he puts it, if a can of beans costs 25p, and one pence is due to losses from a poor security – theft, fraud or whatever – if another firm can reduce its losses and sell beans for 24p, that firm is offering a better service. Looked at this way, security is not sidelined and seen as a cost, but rather security has an enhanced role in the organisation. Unimaginative security staff are not marketing themselves by reporting what they do in terms of the gains to the bottom line, the organisation’s mission, Jerry says. Such education and understanding of the commercial, ethical and other responsibilities of security management are absent from regulation, and are often marginalised by many of the main figures in the security industry, he adds. While agreeing that training in practical security skills is important, he makes the case for equipping security managers to be strategic-level personnel: ‘They have got to go toe to toe with a director of finance, who might have an MBA, who wants to cut the security budget, because they are cutting costs.’ Such security managers must be able to show that a reduced security budget would lead to a much greater loss; and must have the intellectual savvy to understand how organisations work and to show how security makes a genuine and essential contribution to their organisation. The industry has focused too much on the horror stories of people with convictions within the industry. Was September 11 then the ideal opportunity to show security’s contribution’ Jerry Hart closed by calling for security managers as ‘ambassadors’ to explain to organisations that short-sighted attitudes to security may not only have lethal consequences, but reduce the commercial competitiveness of the organisation. Why ensure the highest standards at the design, manufacture and procurement stages if someone steals the product’
