On Thursday, 28th of February, Infologue.com attended the OSPAs UK Thought Leadership Summit 2019 at the Royal Lancaster Hotel. In a Four-Part Series, summaries on each of the four speakers will be released over the course of this week. As with last year, the event was attended by key figures in the security industry, bringing them together with a collection of speakers drawn both from within and from outside the UK security industry.
Dr Glen Kitteringham, Owner & Principal Consultant at Kitteringham Security Group Inc was the second Speaker to speak on the Programme of “The Dangers of Ineffective Security Guards.”
In his talk, Dr Kitteringham stressed the importance and inherent necessity for guards to receive quality training before being put into situations where a great deal is expected of them. Backing his comments with his research conducted on a Global scale, he outlined some of the implications for poorly trained Officers, for their clients, employers and the public.
For Officers, poor training can affect them in the following ways:
– Can lead to high levels of stress when dealing with harassment and violence.
– Can put Officers in the power of fraudulent employers and in a position where they may be subject to exploitation
– Inability to carry out what is expected of them
– Inability to operate equipment, security systems and fundamental responsibilities
For the Public poor training can have the following consequences:
– Harassment & Discrimination
– Denied Service
– Invasions of Privacy
– Assault
– False Arrest & detention
– In some cases Death
For Clients & Employers hiring from companies with records of poor or non-existent training can lead to the following:
– Exposure to lawsuits & Reputation Damage
– Loss of Business
– Sub-Par Asset Protection & Employee Performance
“Our goal as Security practitioners is to enable our clients to be as successful as possible … when you have security guards who are not trained to the correct standard that inevitably can affect your client’s bottom-line.”
“We have 4 Canadian Provinces and 25 US States that have no training programmes whatsoever. In fact, there are 4 US States where not only do you not have to be trained, but you do not have to be licenced either… in India more than 100 hours of training are required by law, however, standards show this is not properly enforced.”
Moving from how countries compare, in terms of the minimum number of training hours mandated by law country to country: the UK standing at 28 Hours. The trend that Dr Kitteringham sees as the future in the international raising of security standards is a tiered service model. Such a system would be linked to salary Kitteringham suggests; helping to differentiate Officers based on security skill-sets; and consequently, helping the effectiveness of company security programmes and risk profiles of organisations. Furthermore, such a state of play would help companies differentiate themselves on the quality of their service to clients, but also to drive efficiencies.
Kitteringham commented, “How does it help your organisation if a Security Manager spends £500,000 on a security system, but the equipment ends up getting turned off, because no-one knows how to use it?”