Recently, writes Paula Mathers, Assistant Director at SIA approved contractor Coverguard Services, I had an article published about my dealings with the SIA through our ISO9001 and ACS certifications last year.
It was a last resort after almost a year of having my concerns and complaints go unanswered, and felt incredibly cathartic. After my article’s publication though, I received an almost immediate response from someone senior within the Security Industry Authority. A response that let me know I had finally been heard. It was like breaking through a glass box into a huge, open field where I could finally breathe.
Having someone from the SIA contact me felt like a significant relief; I finally had a direct contact to go to to discuss my issues, and when it comes to Christmas, we all have a lot of issues!! We get busier with manned guarding sites and key holding sites, plus we lose a significant proportion of our staff to annual leave – both front line and in the office. Coverguard Security have the added strain of having our ACS and ISO certification at this time of year as well. This is just poor planning on my part, so I only have myself to blame!!
For those of you who do the ISO and ACS yourselves instead of using a consultant, you will understand the pressure this puts upon senior management. Your stress levels increase dramatically, your workload quadruples, and your staff work around the clock to support you. Our staff were amazing; they picked up the slack straight away, dramatically reducing the amount I had to come back to at the end of our assessments. It’s something I am incredibly grateful for as it gave me time over the weekend with my family – something I wasn’t expecting to have this last weekend.
I don’t know whether it was the stress of the ISO / ACS audits, or just my personality in general that led me to question some of the points our assessor raised. I found that some of the points we were expected to cover felt to be contradictory to other areas we had to cover. For example, the information we were expected to keep seemed to be in direct contradiction with what was stated in the Data Protection Act. Considering that GPDR [EU-wide general data protection regulation; see for example the ICO website] is due to come into effect in May 2018, things are due to become even more stringent. It made me worry that if we were to comply with the assessor’s request, would we be in violation of GDP when our next assessment came around?
As I now had a direct line to someone within the SIA who had previously listened to me, I immediately got in touch again with him to address my concerns. His reaction baffled me ever so slightly. The points I raised had never been raised to him before, yet I felt them to be rather simplistic and obvious. I felt as though I was the first person who had ever stopped to say “No, I think you’re wrong” rather than just accepting what the auditor had told me we must, as a company, do. This made me wonder – why are we as a society so worried to disagree with authority? Is it the British way to just be polite and accept what we are told has to happen? Has society bred us to mindlessly follow instructions without analysing them ourselves to verify they don’t contradict each other? Why don’t we seem to present our case to those in authority with confidence and surety?
The people who work for the SIA are people – just like you and me. They have a job, but their job role does not define them. They are, as we are, free thinking individuals. The only difference is, these people have the ability to make the changes we would like to see within our industry. They are the ones who set the criteria for the ISO and ACS guidelines we must follow, so why don’t we tell them when we want to see changes? Why do we just moan amongst ourselves when their processes aren’t as we want them to be? Don’t be afraid of the SIA. If you don’t like something, find someone to contact, and have a conversation with them. Talk to them on a level that you wish to be spoken to, and understand that if you don’t, then they don’t know what needs to be fixed. Working together with the SIA on a more confident level will allow us to move forward and have the kind of security industry we want to see – processes that work, less obscure red tape, less ambiguity surrounding what is required in order for us to be the best we can be. Don’t be afraid to have your say – you have that right, you should use it to help your own company, if nothing else.
