Security guarding sector faces major crossroads over pay and benefits
The security guarding sector must be competitive around pay, benefits and working conditions for everyone to attract the best people to join us.
In the words of the legendary Nat King Cole, ‘There may be trouble ahead’, but rather than facing the music and dancing, we must act.
The United Colors of Benetton cannot compare with the security guarding industry when it comes to diversity, with licensed representation from 198 of the possible 223 nationalities in the world. We also have a vast age spectrum for security operatives currently licensed, from 18 to 99, yes 99 years of age, although we are unable to ascertain how many of those licence holders are operational given the three-year licence review at this current time.
Interestingly, the gender definition within the SIA records remains as male or female, with just over 10% of the industry total of 440,666 licensed operatives being female (48,299/10.9%).
Despite much talk over the last few years about making the industry more attractive to females with equal pay, the adjustment of shift times, and allowing changes in working practices — aligning operational contract terms with school holidays an example — this does not seem to have made any real difference with the percentage ratio of female to male officers only increasing by 0.78% since December 2020, albeit this equates to an increase of just over 11,000 females in the industry.
Our youngest industry entrants, the 18-year-olds, account for just 1,122 of our licensed individuals, although this number does increase progressively each year so that in total, as per the latest SIA figures, there are 69,516 licensed individuals between the ages of 18 and 25.
The number of licensed female security practitioners in our industry combined with the 18–25-year-olds age group accounts for approximately 27% of our entire industry (excusing the fact that some people will be double counted by being female and under the age of 25). This is clearly an area where we could attract further colleagues with the right working conditions and benefits.
However, at the peak of the recruitment frenzy in 2022 there were approximately 1.3 million job vacancies in the UK, which has since reduced significantly but still sits at around 884,000 vacancies.
If you look through the job sites you will see that there are plenty of better-paid jobs on offer outside our industry with the likes of Tesco, Asda and McDonald’s, for example, all paying more per hour than a large number of our security officers currently receive, with more family-friendly working hours and without the need to be vetted and screened for licensing purposes, which is, unbelievably, often at a cost to the individual still.
Add the worklessness crisis facing the UK into the mix, with an approximate 9.5 million people of working age neither in work nor looking for work, and you can see why there is trouble ahead.
A recent survey by Total Jobs showed that businesses prioritised attracting talent that they could invest in; training and career development were the most- mentioned benefits, followed by financial rewards.
The winning benefits in the eyes of the candidates were bonuses, flexible hours, free or discounted food and drink, pension contributions over what’s legally required, and private health insurance.
During any contract tender process TUPE Regulations impose an obligation on the outgoing employer to provide employee liability information (ELI) to the new employer, and this must include all the benefits that the staff currently receive.
Having personally reviewed many ELI submissions over a number of years, I continue to be disappointed by what some of the leading companies in our industry are currently offering, or not, as is the case most of the time. Many submissions reviewed offered the minimum wage, the basic statutory holiday and pension requirements, and absolutely nothing else
Of course, I am sure those companies will say that this is their client’s fault because they will not pay any more, but the question I pose is: have you even asked the question or presented your case on behalf of your employees?
So here is our crossroads. Do we continue as we are by showcasing specific sectors of our security industry through excellent industry awards, for example, the Women in Security Awards and EDI&B (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging) Awards, to show how inclusive we are? Although being controversial for a moment: if we are being inclusive, why do we not also have awards for People of Colour, who make up by far the largest proportion of our industry, or the 18-years-old group, who make up 0.04% of our industry, or even for those over the UK state pension age of 66 (rising to 67 in 2026) who continue to work and make up a mere 2.9% of our industry?
Until our industry shows that it’s united at all levels, for all ages and for all genders, and that we are able to compete with any other profession in regard to pay, benefits, and working conditions, we will continue to lurch forward as we have for the last 20 years with a diminishing labour pool and other industries picking the best from those who want to work while we sit on the sidelines and watch.
David Ward CSyP FSyI
David Ward Associates
