Some of the people who could lead our industry tomorrow are already working on our sites today. The challenge is making sure we notice them, support them and give them a clear way forward.
Look closer to home
Every security firm I know is trying to recruit its way to a stronger workforce. Job boards, recruitment fairs, referral schemes, all this activity gets aimed outward at the people who do not yet work within our industry. Meanwhile, the person who could run a control room in two years’ time is probably already on the roster, working nights, but nobody has told them how they could move forward.
That is the real career problem in security. We have plenty of ability across our teams. What we do not always have is a way for people to see where they could go, or the encouragement to start walking down that path. Visibility, more than anything else, decides who progresses and who starts to look elsewhere.
I lead people and culture at Bidvest Noonan, where 157 nationalities work across our sites in the UK and Ireland. That range of background and experience is one of our biggest assets. It is also easy to overlook, because a uniform and a job title can obscure the full picture of what someone can actually do. If we want to develop security careers, our first job is to look harder at the talent we already employ.
The missing ladder
People rarely leave a security job because the work itself has changed. They leave because they cannot see a future in it. When there is no obvious next step, no named role to aim for and no one to ask about it, even good officers assume the ceiling is low and start looking elsewhere.
A career ladder only works if people can see the next rung. That sounds obvious, yet plenty of employers keep progression informal, letting promotions happen informally and then wondering why capable people start to leave. Making the career ladder visible costs very little. It mostly takes intent.
In practice, a visible pathway includes:
- Clearly mapped roles, so an officer can see the route from front line to supervisor, site lead, operations and area management
- A named next step for each person, discussed openly rather than assumed
- Someone to ask, a manager who invites the conversation instead of waiting for it
- Vacancies shared internally first, so people know the opportunities are real
None of that demands a big budget. It needs a decision to treat progression as everyone’s business, rather than a reward handed out to the few who happen to get noticed.
More than a title
Once you start really looking for it, the talent is everywhere. A while ago, one of our security officers at a Dublin shopping centre moved into our employee relations team. She holds a degree in employment law, earned in Brazil years before she ever pulled on a uniform. She had the courage to put her hand up, and our job was to make sure the opportunity became real. She now helps look after colleagues across the business, using expertise that had been sitting unused on a shift rota.
Her story is relatively common in security, even if we rarely talk about it. Across the security industry, we often recruit people who carry far more experience than their job title suggests. There are people working night shifts holding qualifications from other countries that go unrecognised here. We have trained teachers, nurses, engineers and lawyers standing at reception desks and patrolling car parks, their experience invisible. With 157 nationalities in our own workforce, that pool of hidden capability is huge.
The lesson is simple. Experience often outstrips a job title, and the only way to find out is to ask. A short conversation about someone’s background can reveal skills that change what you offer them next.
Why people stay quiet
For a lot of officers, the barrier is not ability. It is confidence, and often language. Someone whose first language is not English may hesitate to apply for a supervisor role, worried their spoken English will let them down in an interview, even when they run a site calmly every single day. Others simply assume the opportunity is not meant for them, so they never ask.
Employers can do a great deal about this, and most of it is practical. Offer development materials and learning in the languages your people actually speak. Train managers to spot potential and raise it directly, rather than waiting for staff to nominate themselves. Set up ‘buddy’ or mentoring arrangements so a first application feels less daunting. Small adjustments like these can help people step forward who might otherwise stay quiet.
Too often, capable people talk themselves out of trying. When you give them confidence that the door is open, more of your team will put themselves forward.
Paper and practice
Formal qualifications do matter, and I would never suggest otherwise. In security they give a career its structure. A Security Industry Authority licence is the foundation, and there is real depth to build from there, through Level 2 and Level 3 qualifications and into specialisms such as close protection, control room operations, event and retail security, and risk and fire safety. Each one opens a different door.
What gets overlooked is how much lived experience matters alongside the paperwork. A licence gets someone onto a site. The judgement needed to defuse a difficult situation, read the mood of a crowd or stay calm in a crisis is learned shift by shift, and it rarely shows up on a certificate. The strongest people usually have both. Good leaders know how to recognise that mix when deciding who is ready for more.
When you are deciding who is ready for promotion, don’t just consider qualifications. Look at what that person has already handled on the ground. Formal learning and real-world judgement should go hand in hand, and the strongest careers are built on both.
What technology can’t replace
The skills worth developing are shifting too. Technology is rapidly changing the way buildings are secured, and it will keep changing over the next five to ten years. Automation is taking on more of the routine monitoring and screening, which frees officers for the parts of the job that need a human eye.
That makes certain qualities more valuable, not less. Resilience, adaptability and the ability to communicate across cultures are becoming some of the most useful attributes in the security workforce, because they travel across roles as the sector evolves. Technical know-how still counts, and it always will. But showing sound judgement under pressure and the knack of dealing with people are what mark someone out as being ready to lead.
Anyone thinking about their future in this industry should keep building those human skills alongside the technical ones. Those are the skills that endure beyond the next software upgrade.
Turning intent into action
Good intentions only count if they change what happens on the ground. That means building real routes for people to develop, and making sure those routes reach a workforce spread across hundreds of sites and dozens of languages.
A genuinely accessible development programme needs a few things to work:
- Learning available in the languages people speak, not only English
- Access that fits shift patterns, at any hour and, ideally, offline
- Content that covers both technical skills and the human ones that help people lead
At Bidvest Noonan we have tried to put this into practice. Our Frontline Rise programme spots talent at officer level and builds the capabilities people need to step into their first leadership role. We back it with a learning platform our teams can reach around the clock, in 120 languages, because a career should never depend on which shift you work or which language you speak at home. It is one approach among many, and the principle behind it matters more than the label. Give people the tools, and make them easy to reach.
Room for everyone
Some doors have stayed shut longer than others. Historically, security has drawn far more men than women into its ranks, and fewer women still into its leadership. If a career path is only visible to half the workforce, we are overlooking talent before anyone even applies.
As an industry, we should be setting ourselves clear targets to change that. At Bidvest Noonan, we want a 50/50 gender balance across our senior team within three years. This year alone, we are aiming for a 15 per cent rise in the number of women working as security officers, and a 10 per cent rise in women in security leadership roles. Targets matter because they force us to pay attention. They help make sure opportunity is not only available to the people who already feel confident enough to ask.
A more balanced workforce is a stronger one. It closes operational blind spots, and it widens the pool of people who can picture a career in security in the first place.
Ask, and answer
Developing security careers comes down to two conversations, and chances are, both are overdue.
If you employ security officers, show them the career ladder and let them know what they need to do to move up it. Make progression a standing item in your one-to-one catch-ups, rather than a subject that only comes up when someone resigns. Ask your people what they did before, what they can do now and where they want to go. Chances are, you’ll be surprised what you find on your own payroll.
And, if you are reading this in a security uniform, wondering whether there is more you can do, the answer is almost certainly yes. Ask your manager what the next step ahead looks like. Tell them what else you can do, and let them know what you did before this job. The people who move forward are often the ones who start the conversation. And as employers, we have a responsibility to make that conversation easier to have.
Julie Mernagh
Chief People & Culture Officer
Bidvest Noonan
