The pandemic has been, and will be, a ‘game changer’, and what was already a fiercely competitive world has become even more so. No surprise, therefore, that those who will emerge from the eventual cessation of COVID-19 will have to demonstrate agility, flexibility and fierce desire to adapt to the new ways of working.
Priorities must always be the safety, health and well-being of our people, ensuring that we do everything possible to learn from the threats and risk issues which have emerged globally, whilst supporting those working in our sector against future pandemics.
The many sector member bodies will be required to demonstrate their continuing support and worth to constituent members.
Our summary objective should be to ensure we are ready to face up to security threats arising from the current pandemic and to develop our individual and collective resilience in the coming years.
need different kinds of people in the response team: no one has all the skills needed to handle a risk event.
• “Trust your team – you will all be tested.” You will only get through a crisis if you can trust your team to deliver what is required. This cannot happen instantaneously: real trust must be built up over a long period of time and from responding to real events.
• “Escalating late is far worse than timely de- escalation.” To take the pressure off the decision to escalate, and ensure a timely response to events, people need to know they can also de-escalate.
• “What do we know to be true? How do we know it to be true?” Answering both questions with a good amount of certainty is critical for making appropriate incident response decisions and furthering stakeholder communication.
representatives of 16 security companies have been tasked to look closely at what training the industry should be investing in to raise standards. The findings of the group will be taken back to the Security Industry Authority to advise on best practice and what they believe should be built into the qualifications and training of all security professionals. This process should drive quality standards as well as demonstrate to clients hiring security services just what they are paying for and why they need to pay more.
Let’s not go into next year leaving this issue of poorly remunerating our frontline workers as something we all say should be addressed but is not. We may have stood on our doorsteps and clapped our thanks but we need to go much further to reward and recognise the importance of our security officers.
Thank you to all our contributors:
In 2019, in the time before COVID-19, Resilience First held a briefing where four leading Chief Security Officers from different corporate sectors shared some of the lessons they had learnt from managing major crises over the years.
It is worth repeating their thoughts, which are astonishingly prescient when considered anew in the light of the worst pandemic any of us have ever experienced.
• “The attack was unforeseen, unprecedented but not unimaginable.” In today’s complex risk environment, you may well need to change your risk mindset. To imagine the unimaginable, you must completely change your view of risk.
• “I had a plan until I was punched in the face.” (Mike Tyson) There is no substitute for exercising your risk scenarios. Only through exercising will the team develop the agility to cope with whatever is thrown at them, which is fundamental to success.
• “First and foremost are people, with all their idiosyncrasies.” People and personalities should be a strength not a weakness. You
One positive take from this pandemic for our security sector is that COVID- 19 elevated the important role all frontline workers play in our society.
The media shone a spotlight on so many people, from supermarket staff, bus drivers, tube workers, railway operators, delivery drivers and postmen to our NHS staff and emergency services workers, and in doing so has helped a nation wake up, possibly for the first time, to how our society really runs. Security officers are often quite literally standing on the front line. Yet they are so often unrecognised until they are needed. They are the silent onlookers, the trained first responders and inevitably the first people asked for help in the absence of a police officer.
They are invaluable to us, yet our industry remains underrated and often poorly remunerated. We must learn to pay all frontline workers a decent wage, one that reflects the important contribution they make to our society and the professionalism of these people. However, if we are to gain the buy-in from the people that pay the wages of our officer, then we as a security industry must maintain and continue to drive high standards. To this end the City Security Council has created an HR group where
© CI TY S ECURI TY MAGAZ INE – WINT ER 2020 www. c i t y s e cur i t yma ga z in e . com
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Robert Hall Executive Director, Resilience First
David Ward, MSyI Chair, City Security Council
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