Paul Lawton-Jones of Mercury Training reports that his Birmingham-based firm has gone from strength to strength in the last couple of months. He spoke to Mark Rowe about how conversations with his guarding and facilities sector customers at the onset of Covid-19 lockdown meant that he has not had to furlough his trainers.
Far from it; he has won a number of contracts as – let’s put it plainly – guarding firms and managers take the view that they have to up-skill to stand out from the crowd if they want to stay in a job if their employer goes through redundancies, let alone if they are to progress.
Mercury has new work starting in September; and is delivering from Plymouth to London to Newcastle to Manchester. It means that Paul is on a recruitment drive for what Paul calls ‘operationally-competent security trainers’. What Paul means by that is that his 15-year-old firm does not recruit people with a training background, to work with his team as trainers, typically training guarding and facilities management supervisers and managers; just as Paul himself has an ops background. “We recruit people with security management experience and put them through our own Academy, at our own cost.”
The people that Paul may be looking for are at a stage in their careers where as supervisers and managers they may no longer want to do 24-hour on-call and want to pass on their knowledge to other managers. They are fully paid and employed by Mercury while they are being trained, gaining a certificate in education and training as well as assessing, through the Doncaster-based exam awarding body Highfield.
Among other Mercury news; in April it gained the Cyber Essentials accreditation; as with others who pass that UK government-backed scheme, it means that they can be taken on with confidence by government departments, in Mercury’s case such as by the Ministry of Defence. Among Mercury’s customers are guard firms large and small; and firms with in-house security in construction, retail, and universities; for taking their security supervisers and managers through typically the ‘security front line manager’ level three apprenticeship.
That term apprenticeship no longer means school-leaver and job-starter alone, but can cover any stage of your career. A firm that puts their staff through such a Mercury 18-month apprenticeship course can take advantage of the Apprenticeship Levy whereby 95pc of the cost is paid for by government. Mercury is also running degree-level, level five courses; and, for facilities management firms, a level four improvement practitioner apprenticeship for the Green Belt of the Six Sigma quality management process, for change management and avoidance of error when following processes.
More in the July 2020 print edition of Professional Security magazine. Mercury last featured in the March 2019 edition (page 32), when we sat in on a gathering of security industry recruiters in Birmingham through the DWP, pictured. Paul Lawton-Jones is pictured standing third from left.
