For those of you that attended the 2021 Women in Security (WiS) Awards, you will know that Jayne King was the winner of the industry category. Every year the feedback from the judges is that it gets harder to mark due to the excellent calibre of nominees … as for Jayne, her nominator wrote that Jayne has been with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust since 2001:
“Jayne has worked as ‘Head of Security and Site Services’ at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust, in the busy metropolitan area of London, renowned as one of the most prestigious NHS organisations. In terms of Jayne’s wider contribution to the security industry: She has served two full terms (six years), as Chair and currently serves as President for the National Association for Healthcare Security (NAHS); developing links both at home and abroad. She is considered a subject matter expert and renowned speaker in her field of expertise. She is the current chair for SyCom (Security Commonwealth), where she has been instrumental lobbying Government for change along with the National Perceptions Campaign. Jayne has also developed the EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) Group within SyCom.”
Jayne was also in the process of developing an EDI category award with Prof Martin Gill at the OSPAs (Outstanding Security Performance Awards) … that has now been achieved. Jayne’s nominator went on: “Jayne has been a judge on the OSPAs for several years. Jayne also sits on the SIA (Security Industry Authority) Strategic Forum…developing healthcare security regulation. During the pandemic Jayne was appointed to develop services for the Nightingale Hospital, London; the flagship and first hospital erected within the UK to deal with the threat of COVID 19.”
The nomination went on to describe many of her character strengths and talked about her experience with multiple terrorist attacks (Westminster Bridge, London Bridge, Finsbury Park, Parsons Green Tube Station, Palace of Westminster and Streatham attack), one of the UK’s COVID 19 (SARS-CoV-2) hot-spots and Anti-Vaccination Demonstrations and Rallies. The person nominating had been onsite during one of these incidents and explained how Jayne’s ability to manage the situation was extraordinary. The nomination ended with: “I cannot think of anyone who deserves this award more and I do not know anyone in our profession who would say different.”
Now you get an idea of how difficult it is to choose one worthy winner from the other excellent submissions. For the next few months I will be profiling the winners in each category so that you get an idea of the great ‘Women in Security’ that contribute to the profession and are rightly recognised for the work they do to develop our profession. I have recently got to know Jayne from working with her on the SyCom EDI Group with the Chair, Ollie Curran of AUCSO (Association of University Chief Security Officers). It is a vibrant forum of ideas and the debate is robust and diverse. I recently caught up with Jayne and asked her how it felt to be a WiS winner.
Jayne said: “Unfortunately, on the night of the awards I was one week post-ankle surgery and therefore unable to attend. However, my lovely friends and SyCom board colleagues – Houdah Al-Hakim and David Ward stepped into the breach and volunteered to represent me on the night. They kept me in the loop by sending a flurry of texts and photos to show me what I was missing and then at quite a late hour sent me an excited WhatsApp call to tell me that I had won. If I hadn’t been in my pyjamas, I might have made a thank you video call!” Jayne was sadly missed on the actual night but as she said, thanks to Houdah and David she was there in spirit and the champagne was quaffed by us in a celebration toast to her becoming the winner of the PSM-WiS Award 2021.
WiS so far
The PSM-WiS Awards have been presented now for over a decade. This award unique in its time is now being emulated in its format of traveling around the industry by others. It was very important from the beginning that women in security felt that they were being recognised from the very top of the ILBs (Industry Lead Bodies). Only the top executives from each of the ILBs are the judges of the PSM-WiS Awards. Now after ten years of finalists and winners we have many champions and role models for women in private security.
Jayne and I continued to discuss the WiS awards and the difference they had made. I asked how did it feel about being nominated. She replied: “As a woman who works in the security industry and having done so for the past 30 years it was a huge honour to hear that I had been nominated at the WiS 2021 awards. Actually, I had also previously been a finalist in the ‘Security Manager’ category in 2016 which was also fabulous as the nomination came from NHS colleagues.”
We once again spoke about the importance of these awards. Jayne went on: “What was a lovely part of the nomination was to see the fabulous other women who had also been nominated I think that every nominee should be proud of themselves for the recognition they have achieved.” I couldn’t agree more. I asked Jayne the same question I ask most industry characters; how did she get into the industry? Jayne said: “My background is quite typical of those in security management positions … I am ex-military. I left after nine years’ service as the RAF was not (at that time) an equal opportunities employer … it was illegal in the military world to be gay. I am thankful that there has been significant change and it is quite a joy to see uniformed personnel celebrating in Pride events.
“Initially I only joined NHS as a security supervisor to get some experience on my CV and then forgot to leave! However, it has bene quite a journey.” Jayne talked about the development of the sector from that time to this … and how she was determined after her experience in the military to engage the wider world of security by co-founding the LGBT forum in 2008 for St Thomas’s Hospital … it is now the longest established LGBT forum in the NHS … Jayne remains Chair and continues to develop and inform others and her ability to transfer her knowledge and skills into such projects, for instance, as the formation of the SyCom EDI platform.
“It is a part of the sector that I think is gaining more recognition and particularly so given the pandemic and daily news items about violence against NHS staff in the Health sector. Personally, I want to see a more diverse workforce in healthcare security given that 78pc of the NHS workforce are women therefore those staff looking after them should reflect the community that we serve. We all have a part to play in this from the perception of what a security officer does (or doesn’t do) to the language used in the industry which includes the wording in job advertisements and Job descriptions. This is where the Women in Security awards have had their part to play, they show the best in the industry where currently women only form 10pc of the security workforce.
“Given that national police forces, the armed forces and other major organisations have actively engaged in recruiting more women into those sectors it is still of concern that women in the private security sector lags behind every other profession. There are lessons to be learnt and change needs to be at a faster pace than it is at present however this is the responsibility of us all and a coordinated approach will help to be a driver of change. This is one of the reasons that I joined SyCom and agreed to take the chair’s role. As part of my tenure, I want to see a real drive on the EDI agenda across the sector. There are some great pieces of work being done by some of SyCom’s membership, but we need to broaden it to involve everyone and not just certain sectors. I am so lucky and grateful that the SyCom board has been so supportive of the promotion of the EDI agenda which culminated in the setting up of Special Interest Group (SiG) to look at EDI across SyCom membership.
“The industry has a real opportunity to evolve and address the inequalities in the sector and this will be done by everyone wanting change. For me the next area that we must all work on is the now much acknowledged Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG). We have all heard the locker room banter, but it is time to challenge. If we don’t challenge, then you are saying it is ok. I’m asking people to be brave, tell those making the sexist, derisory comments that it isn’t a joke or acceptable. Be my friend, be my ally and don’t be a bystander and with all of us challenging we can change the culture towards women and girls.”
In 2022
We have some exciting news. We will be launching the WiS Academy at the 2022 PSM-WiS Awards. This will be an outstanding event that will bring together all the former finalist and winners of the awards over the past ten years, and sadly we will also be honouring those that are no longer with us. When we set-off with the PSM-WiS Awards the dream was that they would run into the future…we wanted to ensure that we had a strong foundation. We aimed at ten years as our target. We figured that if the Awards lasted that long we would have a strong platform from which to launch our Academy. We have achieved our goal and our intention is to launch the WiS Academy next year. As Jayne mentioned, all the women that have been nominated over the years have been exceptional talent and contributed to our industry in many ways. We will be inviting each one of the finalists and winners from the past ten years to become role models, mentors, champions and ambassadors of the wider world of private security.
For when and how to enter the 2022 awards, watch this space; details will be at https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/wis/.
