All changes have up and downsides, and there will be surely be a shortage of guards as a result of licences.
Any shortage means increasing prices. A shortage of guards will be no different. Owners of smaller guarding businesses will be caught in a squeeze between escalating pay rates and costs but with little ability to raise prices since the large guarding companies can more easily take the SIA changes in their stride. So what to do? asks Clive Stevens.
Other industries caught in the same trap have had to respond – and by increasing productivity. In the guarding sector this will be very difficult; "productivity" is a non-existent term. So it will be a huge task and I am sure many companies will fail. Let me explain. Currently most clients pay for a number of people to guard, regardless of their productivity. Productivity in such a context is meaningless. To survive, businesses will need to renegotiate their contracts to be described in terms of service levels and performance rather than quantity of people. If they do that then second thing they will need to do is to introduce management and technology so that the service levels, they have just agreed with clients, can be provided by less manning. That is what productivity improvement means. For those owners who cannot comprehend this, I prophecy doom. The skill and expertise of ’phoning around to find a guard on a Friday afternoon to fulfil an urgent weekend or bank holiday will become less important. Good management and productivity improvement and the correct contracts will become more important.
So how to improve productivity? Time after time, in industry after industry, the answer has been (and still is) technology. The good news is that technology is already available to help our beleaguered guarding industry. Avoided by most, because of the costs and the incorrect type of customer contracts, it will now become a critical ingredient in survival. And the future’s bright for those who do survive. There will be less competition, and what there is will be more professional, and more productive. I therefore see improving profits for those left.
The type of technology that can improve guarding productivity is illustrated by a product called SmartPatrol: is a self-contained, portable, battery powered electronic box with built in GSM modem which can text message or phone a guard if a sensor has been activated. The sensors can be placed around a building up to 300m away from the box. They can be left on all the time and the box turned on and off by text message, so no setting by the client at the end of the day, just by the guarding company. The product can turn on lights, fans, voice recorders, cameras and almost anything you could think of on and off by a text message. Such a system can help one guard do the job of two or three.
I understand that anything new takes time to adjust to. Many people have a justified fear of new technology and the fear of wasting time and hard-earned money. To minimise this and help those that want to survive our company, Euronova, has just introduced a rental scheme for SmartPatrol. This means money is not wasted because the client or guarding company rents it only when he earns profits from it. In addition Euronova can set it up, monitor it, even turn it on and off by a phone call should the guarding company wish us to do so.
Clive Stevens is Managing Director of Euronova, a Bristol-based provider of electronic security products. Clive also lectures in business strategy at two universities near Bristol where he lives.
