Training

Skills webinar

by Mark Rowe

The UK has a major problem with lack of skills, the latest webinar by Prof Martin Gill heard, but there is one saving grace, maybe; it’s the same in other countries.

As ever for his webinar under the banner of the OSPAs (Outstanding Security Performance Awards), Martin Gill had an international panel; from the UK, David Scott, pictured, Managing Director at Skills for Security, and Simon Banks, Founder and Director at CSL Group; and Olivier Hassid, Partner and Director at PwC France; and in Australia, Jason Brown, National Security Director at Thales.

Simon Banks, who has done much work to raise the profile for installer engineering apprenticeships in the UK, opened the hour by saying: “We have a major problem with a lack of skills and a lack of competency in some areas; and I think the irony is that a lot of new skills come into our market via apprenticeships that actually increase competency.” Through the official Trailblazer group for security installer engineers, a curriculum has been developed, specific to young people, he said. The UK’s need was for thousands of engineers; and because of churn, we were not ‘filling the tank’ of new people needed, he said: “We are in a pretty dire situation, actually, so far as skills are concerned.”

Besides his job at the defence company Thales, Jason Brown sits on and works for many industry bodies and groups. He said: “We have many of the same issues,” but went on to describe what sounded like a more thought-through framework for security specifically and industry in general, in Australia; such as relations between vocational education, and business. As security licensing is done by each state in Australia, there is some variation in what training is required.

Olivier Hassid spoke of what was picked up later in the webinar; that it’s not only a matter of purely security skills, but (apparent since Covid-19) crisis management and business resilience; and cyber technicians required; but other skills such as marketing and communications, whether for internal or external use.

David Scott of Skills for Security the UK skills body spoke of skills as directly linked to economic growth, quoting the part that skills for workplace development had in Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak’s mini-budget speech the day before in Parliament. David recalled the Security Industry Authority summit in March (just before the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, as featured in the April and May print editions of Professional Security magazine), and the skills board or skills group that was proposed there, to take forward the ‘skills agenda’, ‘which’ David said: “I honestly believe is the beginning of something much bigger and important’.

But the security industry’s approach to skills is fragmented, he went on; ‘and when there is fragmentation there is skills mismatch’, that is, training that doesn’t meet needs, ‘and that is what we have seen for many years in the security industry’. A strategy, he stressed, is vital, for the industry to get the skills required for businesses and customers. Training providers, employers and the security industry have to work together. As he said in closing, the UK has a cyber strategy and a defence strategy; why not one for public safety and security?

More on the webinars, free to join, at https://theospas.com/thought-leadership-webinars/. The next on Tuesday, July 14, covers innovation in security and crime prevention.

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