Wilson Chowdhry, MD of London-based AA Security, was back on the pages of Professional Security magazine after a while away, in the February edition, to describe covid-safety measures at his guarding firm. Here he offers further thoughts on the pandemic. The industry will move on once vaccinations bring control of covid-19, he writes.
It’s a year since companies really began to contemplate the operational dilemma that the covid-19 virus would serve them with. By late January 2020 many companies like AA had begun purchasing hand-sanitisers and a supply of face masks. Our hand-sanitiser was put to good use almost immediately but after the World Health Organisation initially (in March) decided to declare that face masks were of no value, resulting in our National Health Service opting for the same position – use of face masks was put on a back-burner.
Lockdown
Of course, by June following new evidence that resulted in a positional change by both the WHO and the UK’s NHS, our stored masks were in place already and all deployed staff were able to wear them immediately on client sites. But of course, by June we had already been through a tumultuous lockdown. Families across the country were in a first pandemic-induced ‘martial-law’. Though the intervention did not heavily involve the military our freedoms were being taken away from us under strict new legislation. AA Security has no problem with the imposition of the laws and totally understands the need for such heavy measures. The number of deaths has been phenomenal and we express our sympathies for all those who have lost loved ones. However, the new laws meant continuing our operation required an enhancement of our dynamic risk assessment processes, just to stay in touch with constantly moving Government guidelines and of course the operational changes brought in by clients and by the statutory and private services. We have already listed a number of our operational practices which we have shared via Professional Security.
Management changes
However, our management changes have had to be equally resilient and vigorous. Our control centre operatives began a period of home working and we had to retune our telephony to make this work and ensure that home internet providers had a good broad band speed. Our client enquiries are now sent to an external call centre who only transfer essential calls and text across all other enquiries for our staff to work through via a priority matrix we have set. Some of these practices may remain in the long term as we have found that our performance has not declined and home working has been, for many of our staff, a positive experience.
During the lockdown we received several calls from police officers seeking information on the movement of our officers to and from their place of work. We had no problem with these calls, as the wearing of a security officer uniform should not be seen as evidence of compliance with covid-19 legislation. We were able to use our on-line rostering to confirm which sites the officers had worked at or were travelling to. This limited delays and ensured officers met their deadlines for arrival at scheduled deployments.
Risk assessments
But most importantly we also were able to refresh our risk assessments after each Government guideline change. We were keeping abreast of legislative changes via the Government portal and the emails being sent to us. I as director of A.A. Security hold a NEBOSH general certificate and took this responsibility upon myself, ensuring that our clients were informed about our operational changes and that client requirements were absorbed into our own risk assessments. An example of this is best illustrated in a change of policy for one site, at which our client sought a signing of time-sheets. We explained to the client that we preferred for the construction site foreman to confirm weekly with the quantity surveyor any time deviance, rather than the signing of time-sheets that would result in unnecessary contact and potential sharing of pens. On the same site when the client explained to us that their staff were working eight hour shifts in social/employee-bubbles, we offered to match this with our staff changing the previously preferred 12 hour shifts. It was a resounding success with neither party having to declare any covid-19 infections during the period.
Recruitment solutions
Recruitment during this period has been the hardest department to find solutions for. Our need to see original documents and undertake references brought up the biggest hurdles. Ways in which we coped was to open our office space to potential recruits at scheduled appointments with long delays between appointments during which we used a defogger and antiviral wipes to cleanse a small office space. Original documents were viewed at a distance at which information could be read while the owner held it aloft with photocopies they brought in. Copies of documents had to be dropped with the original signed application forms (our recruitment officers would read e-version of applications), in a plastic container which would only be opened after seven days and then filed. We were required to obtain telephone vetting and seek written references by email, knowing postal references would be delayed due to Royal Mail deliveries and Post Office closures.
Home working
Our timetables remained unaffected throughout the lockdown period, fortunately not one employee or their families have been infected. But we cannot rest on our laurels and we continue to review our operational practice to ensure a safe environment for all stakeholders. Once the lockdown is over AA Security will probably continue to manage some of our covid-19 processes as a mainstay. Many employees having had a taste of home working are keen to retain such employment and as we had no reduction in productivity, we are inclined towards accepting their preference. We also feel that the option to wear face masks and supply of hand-sanitiser is a practice that has merits considering the reduction of illness-related absences we experienced.
Older employees
The industry has a duty to comply with all employment legislation without naming names we are aware that some companies gave redundancies to elder employees, fearful of the impact of covid as age increases. The substitution of risk averse polices such as this over safer operational practice illustrates shallow corporate management. Equality and diversity laws must be upheld and I hope this does not become a growing trend as we found quite conversely that our older employees were more risk aware and as a consequence they were more likely to be compliant with our operational guidelines and COVID-19 laws. One issue that readers may have missed is the difficulty for new companies to form. I have friends who are starting up new security companies and they found it almost impossible to open a bank account, with all the large mainstream banks refusing to open business bank accounts to new companies due to prioritisation of existing companies and huge backlogs due to staff absence as a consequence of the pandemic. One stated factor attributing to the delay is the actioning of bounce back loans for many companies adversely affected by the lockdowns. My advice to anyone in this situation is for them to try out new online companies such as Revolut, Tide and Starling. You can learn more here.
Companies with loans will have find a way to repay these loans and we like many other companies have experienced delays in payment from clients, affecting financial fluidity. What is very obvious is that our economy has reduced and there will be cashflow problems, and all serious businesses must begin to put in place financial plans that enable them to continue operating through an ever-worsening economic climate.
As is always the case, contracted security services are often viewed as a luxury and there will be companies affected by the pandemic who will either switch to an internal security team or who simply terminate contracts hoping for the best. The latter may not be a first choice however, as crime rates have increased in tandem with a diminishing economy and the resultant financial desperation. Security companies will have to introduce concepts of lean thinking, such as investment in renewable energy (grants are available), bulk buying and their own culling of non- essential practices and employees.
It’s not all doom and gloom however, and in fairness the one really strong positive to come out of the national lockdown, has been the huge sense of community camaraderie that many security companies have themselves contributed to. In our case we have given free space in our offices and use of our furniture and equipment to a local charity that began to feed the homeless and newly unemployed as well as families on long term benefits. Their food bank and ‘Meals for the Homeless’ project was featured on the BBC and we hope that such collaborations grow. You can learn more about the charity and their work here.
