Time to Change Gear

Skills for Security National Conference 2008: Security training and process – have we really improved?

06 Nov 08

The 2008 Skills for Security National Conference at the Williams F1 Conference Centre in Oxford focused on SMT and Infologue.com's 'Make The Change' Campaign. In a series of articles, info4security will be presenting the thoughts of the industry's leading practitioners as delivered on the day.

Are the so-called 'dinosaur days' of poor training practices now long gone? Although progress has been made, it's evident there's still some important work to be done, as Guy Mathias explains.

As a long-term security practitioner, I’ve never been surprised by the number of ‘new recruits’ to the organisations for whom I’ve worked who came complete with a ‘case history’.

Once upon a time, I recall a security provider requesting an officer who’d been successful at interview the previous day to meet him at a Huntingdon Life Sciences site that very afternoon. On arrival, the officer in question was given his uniform and told to change into it. He was then instructed to stand at the front gate and prevent incursions. The story speaks for itself.

On another occasion, I had direct experience of a London-based contract guarding company which had set up a recruitment system with a Nigerian. The process was remarkably simple – ergo scary! It went something like this. They would, though their intermediary, meet the Lagos-Heathrow flights, recruit individuals directly in the Arrivals Hall and send them straight to site. Uniforms – such as they were – were held in a nearby vehicle. The guys were simply driven to site and began working right away. Of course, the client knew nothing of this.

Are the dinosaur days now long gone?

From my own experience gained since joining the security industry some 30 years ago, I can confirm that my training consisted of a morning in a ‘classroom’ followed by a multiple choice test in the afternoon where the ‘trainer’, who had no formal teaching qualifications, read out the answers during the test. I was then presented with a certificate stamped with the training body logo. Hurrah!!! I was fully trained, ready for action and able to cope in a competent, cool and professional manner with anything that might be thrown at me... I think not!

Thankfully, these dinosaur days are – generally speaking – long gone, and the industry has now reformed to an extent that trainers have to be qualified and hold formal training qualifications coupled with appropriate experience prior to being ‘let loose’ on a classroom full of impressionable, potential ‘Rambo’ types.

The ‘7303: Certificate in Adult Learning’ is an example of the type of qualification that should be held, along with certificates showing that a person is qualified to teach security matters in addition to conflict management.

The Skills for Security scheme has further promoted higher training within the security world, with a range of courses that can be undertaken by individuals wishing to develop their chosen career further. The better security companies are linking into these schemes to the benefit of their staff and offering very promising educational opportunities.

My own company has put its security staff through First Aid Training, Health and Safety risk assessment training, the training necessary to gain the Security Industry Authority (SIA) licence and also CCTV training (to name but a few areas). We also sponsor supervisors and managers to complete various qualifications in the discipline of security.

Money, time, effort... and the client

However, training costs money, time and effort and this is often difficult to ‘offload’ on the client. Many would argue that it’s the security provider’s responsibility to train staff, but security budgets are notoriously tight. There are still many security companies viewing training as a necessary evil that needs to be carried out as cheaply and as quickly as is humanly possible.

‘Time is money’, as they say, and if a security officer is sat in a classroom they’re not being productive in terms of making money for the company. Many service providers are still unable to recognise the long-term advantage of sound and relevant training for their officers which will ensure the industry moves on to the next level and beyond. This negative attitude is to the detriment of employees, clients and the industry as a whole.

Unfortunately, an attitude still exists among many managers within the industry that a security officer is a ‘breathing body’ who doesn’t need to have any great level of training or education to carry out their duty. In former days such an argument might have held some validity, to the extent that one certainly doesn’t need a degree to open a barrier. However, that is most certainly not the case now.

It’s also true to say that knowledge, however basic that may be, empowers people to want to learn more, develop and improve. In fact, knowledge makes them yearn to actually stretch themselves. In the long run, this can only add more value to the industry and to those who work within it.

I have to state, though, that the biggest area of concern continues to emanate from the contract management area of the business. Far too many companies still operate in the manner that where a manager needs X number of staff recruited to cover his portfolio, and interviews candidates to fulfill this requirement alone, that manager is not interested in the training process. To him or her, it represents an obstacle to fulfilling their requirements to the client.

Taking the easy option

All of us that have been involved in recruiting for the security industry will be only too well aware of the basic fact that the standard of many applicants can be extremely poor. The easy option is to fill the vacant positions. Due to a shortage of more suitable candidates, these unsatisfactory individuals are taken on and eventually filter through to training.

The trainers are then placed under immense pressure to ‘get the person through as they are needed on the shop floor’ – to the extent that if the person fails the trainer is asked to ‘take him (or her) through the paper’.

To this end, areas in the industry still exist where security officers are sent out on assignments with little or no English language skills, or indeed any general competence abilities. There have been numerous rumours of trainers who complete the papers themselves and ask the candidate to sign the examination forms, spoonfeed the answers by giving ‘mock’ tests that are actually the real exam or actively ‘doctor’ the examination papers themselves prior to them being sent for marking.

So how do we prevent this from happening? Have a final examination process that the trainer is not involved in and which is undertaken by an independent board. The exam papers are then sent for independent evaluation, after which the results are sent to the company.

In this way, the company is prevented from influencing the outcome of the exam. Candidates cannot be passed through the proverbial ‘back door’. The security industry then ends up with higher quality officers that have passed an examination process under their own merit rather than by subterfuge.

Due to the specific issues surrounding the research industry, I decided that the contract security officer training manual should take a different route than the usual. Therefore, I gave every security officer and their senior managers a thorough intelligence brief on our main threat, which at the time was from Animal Rights extremists. I did this because they were operating over three UK facilities, and even I (wearing my red underpants over my blue suit and emerging from a telephone box) could not be at all three sites at the same time!

‘Making the whole’ of security

It has always been my contention that the in-house security manager ought to meet halfway with the security provider in ‘making the whole’. If the solutions provider is properly briefed then they will know how to react when the in-house security, facilities or Human Resources manager isn’t there.

This proved to be good practice, as on a number of occasions when extremists did arrive to protest and I was away, the contract site manager had to deal with the situation. Following the briefings, he recognised and identified who the offenders were and knew precisely what to do. I had also ensured good liaison between the site manager and the specialist police unit seconded to deal with Animal Rights extremism issues.

We decided we would have all of our staff licensed by the Regulator, primarily because we consider ourselves to be (and we are) a professional outfit with a reputation to maintain. As I firmly believe my managers should be able to do the same things they ask the guys to do, I decided to make sure they were self-licensed. Their feedback, though, was something of an eye opener.

The training was pretty basic and reflects the type of person currently attracted to security jobs. However, I can see no way we will see the much vaunted increase in standards without higher levels of training and stiffer examinations. I also think some of the training is pretty much just about paying lip service, while attitudes towards equality in the security sector still have some way to go.

My managers were once told that… “You may have your own opinions about these things, but in the workplace you shouldn’t let them be known”... There was no suggestion discrimination is really wrong, just that you should keep it to yourself… Somewhat appalling, don’t you think?

Breaking down the learning barriers

With many of the well-established teams (often transferred over through the TUPE process) it is hard to find a simple, security IT package that older, non-tecchy types can get to grips with and understand the jargon. In fact, many of these characters are only familiar with the type of mouse that goes “Squeak”!

The challenge for our industry is to produce easy-learning modules that will break down the barriers.

Many security officers have refused to work in Control Rooms due to the number and diversity of PCs deployed in the older spaces for different alarm and environmental systems.

Training is often either never detailed enough or so detailed that the audience is lost. An equal balance has to be found to captivate the audience. I personally find involving those that use the equipment are the best to help in critiquing the training material.

Nowadays, a single PC can have many platforms and systems running from it. While this is good for those that can handle it, and are PC literate, it does pose a challenge to the strugglers to identify process and report the information to the appropriate authority.

I have experience of the latter where security, engineering and fire alarms report back to the same PC. When making an audit visit to a supplier organisation, the security officer stationed in the Control Room reported a continuous bleeping coming from the console. When I asked how long it had been going on, he stated about 15 minutes and that he couldn’t find the source of the ‘annoyance’. Needless to say he had also not reported this to anyone.

I asked if he’d checked all the alarm reports/pages and he said: “Yes”. He checked again and to his surprise there it was – a freezer alarm. It had been activated by transcending its set parameters. In this instance further training was required. One can only wonder what might have happened if it had been a fire alarm or an intruder/fence alarm at night.

I know of some that long for that bright, burning brazier… even now.

When systems are installed, I believe Best Practice is to remember to activate all alarm signals back to the PCs so that officers hear (and through process identify) all activation alarm tones, unless of course an alarm activation overrides anything currently on their display. It certainly shouldn’t be hidden as I found.

More time spent on customer service

There should be more time spent on customer service which, for most organisations employing security staff, forms a significant part of their remit.

‘Meet and Greet’ is so important these days. Manage out the still–prevalent attitude that so many officers have that they’re a quasi-police service and operate on the basis of being as obstructive as possible! As directors and managers, you should be spreading the word as to why security is there. There’s no need for security officers with ‘attitude’.

At the end of the day, respect begets respect – a truism that needs to be remembered and instilled at every opportunity.

No sign of the ‘Red Bull Effect’

When the White Paper and, subsequently, the SIA was introduced, we all harboured high hopes that the Regulator would revitalize our industry. While much has been achieved, I have to say that in my view I’m missing the ‘Red Bull/Jump Leads Effect’ I was hoping for! I hoped that the creation of the SIA would help raise our profile and professionalism, but I have to say that the jury is still out among the professionals I meet within the industry.

Has the Regulator targeted procurement and finance directors with the ‘SIA message’? That we do have levels of competence and training, and are addressing the same? Procurement are the people whom negotiate prices – and if the security industry could raise its profile (and even its charges) it might just result in security personnel being remunerated on an improved basis – which in turn might just mean we would start to attract better quality officers.

One of the key points about the quality of new recruits to the industry is the licence issuing policy. I have talked with a number of my peer group colleagues across a wide swathe of UK industry. It would appear that a high percentage of new recruits entering the industry (I estimate as high as 70% of new applicants) are for corporate security positions, and are opting to undertake the Door Supervision licence – which is effectively a ‘dual’ badge.

The training and examination format has little in common with the ‘front line’ licence yet if successful (and I note that not that many are unsuccessful!) applicants can work in any corporate security environment. The more relevant front line licence holders, however, cannot work in the door supervisor sector!

Taking the message into our schools

If security was taken in to schools and promoted as a profession we might, within five years or so, change the way this industry is viewed. Unfortunately, it was decided that door supervisors could sit an examination (with less training) and could therefore work as a security officer, and yet security officers could not work as door supervisors. What message did this send out about security officers? Don’t forget, of course, that a large number of security companies put their officers on door supervision courses to save time and money.

The license cost renewal is priced at the same as a new application. Why? For many operatives in the industry still working on a ‘living wage’ (and who don’t have employers to pay the licence fee initially) this is a substantial payment. It’s also creating another barrier which prevents new blood from entering the industry, and who may also have to fund their own training course.

The licence renewal has the flavour of a stealth tax. Surely the the renewal doesn’t have the same cost factor as the initial checks and licence issuing?

Another issue was that the Regulator pre-numbered individual Application Forms which were then completed and returned. However, due to the fact these individual numbers were not pre-printed on the envelopes, they had hundreds of thousands of envelopes returned with no way of tracing who had returned their documents. Basically, thousands of officers had their original documents lost, then had to apply for copies that were not accepted to the SIA when they had lost the officers’ originals. Not good for confidence in the issuing body.

CRB check is a positive element

As far as SIA licensing’s concerned I think the Criminal Record Bureau check is positive and that the intent of mandatory training is a good one, but the training package is extremely basic – and, in the opinion and experience of my managers, on occasion pretty poorly delivered.

The security sector is still characterised by low pay, long and anti-social hours of working and either limited or non-existent personal development. Until these factors are addressed we will not attract the candidates we are seeking to consider the security industry as a suitable alternative to other professions.

Unless a company can provide good, effective, relevant and structured training, coupled with a realistic wage for non-Dickensian hours and the chance of career progression, we’ll always end up with candidates that ‘fall’ into the business out of necessity rather than choice.

One of the other key factors in providing additional training of staff is, once qualified, a high percentage of employees are being ‘poached’ at a higher rate by larger security providers. The smaller companies are then forced to re-recruit and retrain, and the vicious circle continues.

It’s hardly motivational theory!

Last Friday I was talking to a procurement manager who obviously had a very low opinion of one of his security officers. When I enquired as to the officer’s pay rate he told me that it was £6.15 an hour. How can a security officer be motivated on that wage?

In this industry the security officers are our product. You can have the best product on the market, but if society views that product as poor quality you will never eke out a good price or anyone who wants to be that product.

An officer can be fully trained by every training body in our industry but the fact remains – how, on a minimum wage, do you motivate, retain or progress that individual? Training is not the only answer. Pay and marketing in tandem with training are all required if this industry is ever going to be progressive and respected as a profession.

I do think, though, that guarding (or should that be security solutions?) companies see the officers as just a means to an end. Until the companies view training as a differential in obtaining business and adding value rather than being a ‘tick in the box’ for legislative reasons, we will surely not be able to make much progress.

Do we want guards or officers?

For Heaven’s sake, we still use terminology such as ‘guard’ instead of officer which reflects my points. The former has all the old-fashioned ‘night watchman’ connotations applied to it.

If you cannot make the industry attractive to the candidates we claim that we aspire to, then we will still be in the same position, debating this subject and asking the very same questions in ten years’ time. I don’t believe any of us really want that to happen.