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Retail security personnel deployment

Following last month’s report, Stuart Alderson-Smith reviews the second presentation delivered at UNISA by Alison Wakefield.

At Dr Alison Wakefield’s recent presentation on Enterprise Risk Management to industry stakeholders, her findings relating to the deployment of retail security personnel (RSP) were described. The research in question dealt primarily with the impact of human factors on the deployment of RSPs.

According to Wakefield, the “research knowledge on the core characteristics, organisation and effectiveness of commercial security remains piecemeal”. She adds that “one aspect of security effectiveness that has been neglected is the procurement process . . .”

Her research, along with co-researcher Professor Martin Gill from the Perpetuity Group (UK), utilised the following methods:

* Group discussions with retail and contract security managers to orient the study.

* Semi-structured interviews with retail security consultants, retail security managers and others in the retail and/or security sector from across Europe and the US.

* Self-completion questionnaires distributed by post.

Some feedback from those involved in the industry sheds light on the findings:

The rationale

One retail security manager stated that there is nothing he is aware of that states guards are the answer – they simply have to make an educated guess and use professional judgment. Verifying effectiveness was also tricky as stores do not really appear to compare before and after states for theft and related shrinkage problems – they simply tend to use guards to deal with short-term issues, and then when all returns to normal the guard is withdrawn.

The contract

It was noted that often the initial rationale for having RSPs was omitted from the actual procurement contracts. One interviewed security officer stated: “What store managers want from security guards generally has no bearing on what was agreed with the procurement people .... and they are the ones with the clout .... and probably less still to do with what security managers want to happen.”

Additionally, many in the industry felt that profit was the overall driving force in security procurement. A contract security manager added: “A lot of the problem is that we do not deal with decision makers, and worse, the people we do [deal with] think they are.”

The reality

Much variation was made evident when it comes to the day-to-day realities. One mentioned that he met a store manager who was an ex-paratrooper and wanted the guards to be his 'troop'. Others felt that 'some store managers are really good, and they get a real rapport going with the guards and build a team', whilst the rest tend towards the opposite – being completely detached and disinterested.

Generally findings were that site procedures were typically more administrative than operational. Where operational procedures were issued, they were not necessarily followed, and, most tellingly, there was little hard evidence to demonstrate the direct effect of security staff on theft levels. But it is not all doom and gloom, as one comment from a retail security manager illustrates: “Where you have good manager-guard relationships, it works really well … Normally where we have a high turnover of guards, it is because managers have not bought into our ‘partnership approach’ .... where managers take the guard into their store team, the guards stay. Over the 12 months we have been running this conscious programme of building partnerships with contract guards, we have made a real impact on staff turnover.”

A relationship issue that causes headaches in the procurement and subsequent evaluation is where corporations tend to typically procure the various elements relating to security completely separately and independently. This seems to demonstrate a lack of an overarching security strategy.

Conclusion

Overall it can be said that the scope of RSP procurement falls within the confines of enterprise risk management, and thus needs to (i) be part of an overall, all-encompassing security strategy, and (ii) careful attention needs to be paid to the security contract to ensure the rationale is in fact included, and that individual store managers do not simply override the contract specifications and create their own.

With excerpts quoted verbatim from Dr Alison Wakefield’s presentation slides.

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