The OSPAs thought leadership summit in London yesterday was, writes Mark Rowe, indeed ‘refreshingly honest’ as someone said at the end. Among the topics and sense of progress was talk about industry collaboration, for the greater good. But there’s always an elephant in the room; something well known but not spoken of. In this case, the elephant was not in the room.
Fittingly the current and immediate past chairs of the umbrella group The Security Commonwealth, Jayne King and Guy Matthias, rounded off the summit by describing how the security industry can collaborate, and what a united front can achieve. For things are linked: better pay and conditions for staff; a ‘career pathway’; making the work more attractive to the young and talented; raising the sector’s profile and respect among the public.
Jayne King and Guy Matthias and most of the members of the Commonwealth, and most others who work for industry bodies, as represented inside the summit room and exhibiting outside, are volunteers. They have demanding and full-time jobs. How do they do it? Do they sleep?! Why do they do it, because while important, such work is thankless. An answer is that few feel like doing it: hundreds of thousands work in the private security industry, thousands pay to be members of industry bodies, but you can count the volunteers who make things happen in the dozens. The base is worryingly small.
It also means it’s a wonder that anything gets done; the latest, for example, the Commonwealth’s EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) charter. Someone had to write it; members had to agree on it; and someone had to upload it online, and someone has to maintain the website. Volunteers only have so much time and energy.
This is no way for a sizeable sector to show its best to society. OSPAs founder and summit chair Prof Martin Gill did say his regular refrain; that the security industry does excellent things (as the OSPAs and other awards schemes champion); but it’s bad at telling others, and that’s a bad thing to be bad at.
Take one, visible example: the security industry has never had a spokesperson, someone the media can turn to reliably, and give a good account of the sector, whatever the context. Contrast what with – one of many possible examples – Helen Dickinson, chief of the trade association the British Retail Consortium. Once a year it brings out a retail crime survey and you can rely on her and the BRC to report – to the public and policy-makers – about assaults on shop staff.
Instead private security leaves it to either self-appointed or media-appointed ex-coppers turned consultants. They speak well; but do they represent private security? The media wants reliable voices, available at any hour; a volunteer with a day job cannot fit that bill.
The answer is for private security to have its equivalent of BRC-Helen Dickinson, or any number of other examples from commerce. To rely on volunteers’ goodwill and what time they can spare is imperfect. However, to rely on a paid employee from an industry body is imperfect also.
Life is too short for grudges. Suffice to say that we should be sceptical of talk of any industry ever ‘speaking with one voice’. An answer would appear to be that one or more industry associations pays for staff to be seconded to the Commonwealth, to be devoted to industry affairs. The Security Institute has about 13 staff; about as many as the other 40 or so industry bodies that make up the Commonwealth have, put together.
The Institute was the elephant not in the room. Literally; for while IFPO UK and ASIS UK exhibited at the summit, the Institute did not. Its chief exec Rick Mounfield has recently announced that he is leaving. A few cloned Rick Mounfields would do wonders for industry collaboration. He came to the chief’s post as an Institute member; he had a practitioner’s background; and he visibly likes and is good at connecting people – both in public, and discreetly behind the scenes; both necessary, particularly when private security shades into counter-terror and national security.
The Security Institute does have a record of backing industry collaboration. Indeed, Emma Shaw while Institute chair was behind the setting up of the Commonwealth, in 2015. In 2014 she launched in London a manifesto. It’s only right that since her, chairs of the Commonwealth have been from other bodies. It’s a balancing act, that an umbrella body is, and looks, truly representative and not belonging to anyone. And no matter what the arrangement, it will not please everyone. Yet the fact is that the current board does not have a current Institute person. Guy Mathias did put in a shift as an Institute director on the validation board.
Whether the industry really collaborates, for the time being, depends on the Institute. The SIA cannot lead; it has too many masters – the Home Office, the public, besides the security industry it licences. The Institute’s staffers and ultimately, its members have to decide what the Institute does with its money; if they want some of their income (so relatively large, because it is so successful) to go to truly industry-wide causes. If the Institute does want to give a six-figure sum to creating a Commonwealth secretariat to make things really happen – consistently get in the ears of government, set priorities and speak about them regularly in the mainstream media – the industry also has to decide if it’s happy with that. Meanwhile, related occupations such as the police, with their own interests, are wrestling with how they best represent themselves too.
