The security industry says it wants to recruit (and retain) the young, the keen, and women, and to reflect the diversity of society. But it’s said that for years, and what are employers actually doing about it? That’s raised by a father and son, each in retail loss prevention. The father is Ian Paton, who’s featured in Professional Security a number of times, for example in 2013, as the security and risk manager at recycling company Sims Group UK. He visited ST19 Manchester in the summer, one of the magazine’s conference-exhibitions in the Security TWENTY series, and we spoke to Ian, pictured there.
Ian left what was Strathclyde Police after 22 years in 1999, and his passage into private security was hardly escalator-smooth. He recalls the first job he could find was as a uniformed security officer in Princes Square shopping centre in downtown Glasgow: “Which I didn’t want to do, but needs must.” He chanced upon another, non-security, job in Glasgow as an evening manager at the Institute Of Electrical Engineers; the part-time money as good as the security officer’s full time. He feels – for such can be the image of ‘just’ a security officer – that if he had taken the officer’s job, he would not have achieved what he has in the 20 years since.
For a year later came a job as a regional security manager for Focus DIY, the retail chain, and over five years he rose to become an area manager and head of security: “But I was told by the person that gave me the job that I would not have got an interview if I had been a security officer, purely because of the perception of the security industry.” That was, you recall, before SIA badging. Ian’s employer sponsored him to take a master’s in security management at Loughborough; so he was doing the right professional things.
As he says, once he had that ‘head of’ job on his CV, ‘then other jobs came my way,’ responsible jobs, such as Security Solutions Manager at Travis Perkins, ‘because I had the experience, I had the skills’. Which raises the old dilemma; how can you get experience and skills, to satisfy recruiters asking for them, if lack of them bars you from those jobs?! Ian recalls that a big part of his regional security job had been investigation; so his police background served him well: “But if I hadn’t had that, I would really have struggled to get into that.” Now, Ian has been in security, risk and loss prevention almost as long as he was in the police. The industry has changed in those 20 or so years. What now for someone seeking to make a career in the sector, like Ian’s 30-year-old son Gary?
Neither of Ian’s sons looked to follow in his police footsteps. Gary has worked in various retail and care jobs; and as a uniformed, SIA-badged security officer in retail and commercial. He took a law (LLB) degree at university; halfway through, felt that legal work wasn’t for him. Discussing what next with his father, Gary decided it was best to carry on and finish the degree; and graduated in July 2019. His aim now; to gain security experience and a further degree in security; ideally as an apprentice so that he could learn and earn at least something to keep him going. But what is there for such a young man or woman? Meanwhile he has gone back into uniformed security; but with his heart set on some sort of loss prevention or risk management.
Which raises uncomfortable questions for the industry; after about 15 years of the SIA regime, and much talk of professionalising, what companies out there are catering for starters in the security industry, where are the apprenticeships compared with crafts such as plumbers and electricians? What is mapped out for the new-comer?
For part two, read on: https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/news/interviews/a-fathers-story-part-two/.
