Do you know what’s keeping your boss awake at night?

If not, you are going to struggle to get your share of the resources you need to do your job, whether that be more people, new technology, or even recognition and a pay rise.

Find out how to ensure you are seen as a business enabler.

Speaking the right language

In an age of limited time and budgets, social media chaos, mountains of data and the need for immediate answers, do you speak the same language as your boss?

Making sure you remain relevant to the business you work in with your security and/or investigations duties is more important than ever. If you can’t relate your work to what makes your organisation successful, then ultimately you will fail.

It’s either about saving money or making money. Can you really say you contribute to either and back it up with facts and figures?

There may be hundreds of people in your business who are all after the same pot of money and resources needed to get their project done.

How to get your share

One of the answers is to make sure you spend time with the various business stakeholders and really understand what is driving their agenda.

For example, let’s say you work in retail loss prevention:

How could you link your security duties to the success of new store openings or product launches?
How could your local security services support the in-store customer journey?
What services could your team offer and how could you align them so that you become part of the planning process and the success of business operations?
What sort of security/risk information would be useful to the store operations planning team?
What format do they need the information in and when is it needed?

You are far more likely to get recognition funding for your projects if you can link your services to these points.

Invest time learning about the business

To do this, you need to really invest time into getting to know your business’s overall goals. Spend time with key people in the organisation, ask lots of questions and become well informed. It may take you slightly outside your comfort zone, but it’s really important to listen to the language used and emulate it.

The results of simply listening to others and then using the right language can be truly amazing. Your work will become part of the jigsaw that makes the business a success, not just an underfunded support role that people don’t really appreciate or understand.

The future of integrated security

Corin Dennison, director – global profit protection at Adidas, has worked hard to ensure his team is viewed as a ‘business enabler’ and has this to say on the subject: “The future of integrated security lies within the ability of the function to become a true business partner, not simply a ‘necessary’ cost centre.

“Leveraging solutions such as CCTV and case management to serve as business enablers, as opposed to ‘security serving’, demonstrates the foresight of security leaders to be actively commercial and aligned to your business objectives.”

Mick Creedon, who spent ten years as the chief constable of the Derbyshire Constabulary, had to face the same dilemmas over resources, finances and priorities in the public sector and in an organisation where the safety of citizens and attacking criminality framed the business objectives.

He adds: “With over 4,000 staff and officers, I had a constant stream of funding requests. The ones I got behind were those that clearly aligned specifically with mine and the force’s objectives and that were articulated in a way that supported these fundamentals.

“The policing mission is wider than ever before, with challenges from technology, terrorism, globalism, organised crime and rightly, a retained focus on local priorities. Any decision making process had to constantly balance risk and threat against declining resources and increased expectation from the public, courts, media and politicians. In any decision making, there had to be a clear focus on ‘what needed doing’, an understanding of the need, the plan, the resources and the timescale.

“Policing is no different to the commercial world in many ways and moving forward we will all have the same challenges, demands, resource limitations and the requirement to involve staff who truly understand the business.”

Take the first step

In your security role, you should have access to mountains of very valuable data about what is going on in your business at its various locations, its products and its employees and customers that would be useful to many different stakeholders.

You need to take the first step. Establish who the key decision makers are in your business and ensure that everything you do aligns with the company’s values and business aims.

Spend time speaking to people and researching best practice to find out what data is useful, in what format and then share it with the right people.

You may also wish to work with industry specialists and software developers who can help you to speak the right language, keep you informed and get what you deserve.

Mark Whittlesea

Product manager – smartcase at Altia-ABM

See related articles in our Security Careers section.

Security role progression: speaking the right language