Bob Forsyth, the Managing Director of MITIE Total Security Management (TSM) introduces his eleventh blog on Infologue.com. Bob writes: “In my last blog, I talked about taking our industry in a new direction, and seeing it become a more professional sector valued by its staff and customers that is able to offer career opportunity.
“I also said we must modernise the way we market ourselves and modernise the terminology we use. I am passionate that if we continue to use out-dated words this will be a barrier to the changes that need to be made.
“In most situations in life the way we are described affects how we behave and feel about ourselves, as well as the way we are perceived, and sometimes judged by others.
“Self-esteem is directly linked to motivation, and motivation is directly linked to how well we perform. As a general rule, people want to contribute, be of value, and make a difference – in other words to matter. An employee’s job title can affect their performance if they believe that the role is not considered valuable or contributes to the company’s success. By letting employees know how their role is important to the organisation and provide them with a pathway to move to a more prestigious role, it can increase their motivation to do better, thus benefiting our clients and contributing to security being thought of as a professional industry.
“Recognition is part of the reward system and by recognising and empowering our people through up-skilling, being clear of the importance of their roles, and creating exciting paths for development, will instigate a change in perception around the security sector.
“Referring to a highly-trained, skilled security professional as a ‘guard’ or ‘body’ can only have a negative impact in how they see the importance of their role and can often make them feel that they are not valued. Security is a people business and it’s time to change the perception of these people and change their skill levels to match the potential of our industry. Even with technology becoming more prevalent, people will not be totally replaced, but will be enhanced and will need to be skilful in this area to work alongside technology.
“In summary, to allow our industry to evolve in a positive direction we must make small changes to start the step change. If we’re all working to the same objective we can achieve what I hope is our common goal of a highly-thought of profession. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the words we should be adopting, tweet me @BobTSM.”
MITIE Total Security Management Website
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