To celebrate International Women’s Day, Neill Catton, Managing Director at CIS Security, has released the following statement.
“To celebrate International Women’s Day I want to pay tribute to women working at CIS Security, the wider Security industry and beyond for the contribution made to our workplace. I believe that we live in a country which is seeing progression in terms of gender parity in the workplace, but I am aware that there is a lack thereof in other countries.
“At CIS, We have been working to visibly celebrate the successes CIS Security women for some time, through participation in professional women’s associations, annual attendance at the City of London IWD Breakfast and not least through professional profiling in our Company Newsletters. A recent quotation in one of our “female focus” Newsletter pieces, stood out for me:
“I enjoy the challenges, the variety and unwavering support I receive from my managers. I am so glad that I am working with CIS as I have achieved so much and grown in confidence through my work. I come from Jamaica, which is a developing country, where working life is not always fair and there is work to do when it comes to gender equality.”
“This quotation, which was from a successful and highly respected member of staff, brought me to a realisation of the importance of our role in the UK in supporting and encouraging women, particularly those who come to live here and may consider joining the workforce. To unlock the potential of women’s contribution globally, we must collectively enable and elevate and equalise females in our world until parity is achieved.
“We have an opportunity in the security industry to make some great leaps in this area. Comparing the number of women working in the private security industry – 9% with the police force in England and Wales – 29%, it becomes clear that there is little reason for such a gap and we continue to work towards improved gender diversity in our industry. In my experience it is good business to reflect the people we serve in terms of diversity and a better balance results in improved communications, team collaboration and enhanced working relationships.
“Here at CIS we support the pledge for parity through equal pay for men and women, and we have additionally made a commitment to drive an increase in the number of women in our company to at least 20% by 2020”.