Until very recently, I worked part time for one of the top five largest security services companies of the world. It was not Securitas, for which I worked temporarily while studying economics several decades ago. I did not even now that the IT consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton was also in the securities service business.
"This industry is rapidly growing across the world. In the United States alone, the security industry is a 350 billion dollar industry.
As a security officer for this firm, I worked at a very high profile property, a luxury high end shopping mall in Scottsdale, AZ. Perhaps, one of the top five premier shopping malls in Arizona.
Previously, I blogged here about Security services use outdated technology in the retail industry
The company, I worked for about 2.5 years is particularly lousy in several respects. Especially towards the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, staffing levels fell to a low of about 50% of normal at this property. The company proved unable to attract new hires, so the situation lasted for over half a year or so. Not only that the last two new hires turned out to have such serious non temporary medical conditions that their work performance was very severely impaired and the other colleagues had to pick up their work.
Despite the extra work imposed on the remaining staff during the Covid-19 pandemic it has not occurred at all to top management to praise the extra work done at the local level and to recognize or reward the loyal and dedicated employees with e.g. bonus checks or what have you. In my 2.5 years with the company, nobody from regional management or other higher management rarely ever showed up on site.
The company does not even offer incentives or rewards like extra bonuses for a job well done! I am not even sure they really track performance at the individual level.
I probably don't have to mention that the hourly pay for part time employees was low like $14 per hour when I started. The company also does not offer to raise the pay even after more than 12 months with the company and a good work record. So it was left to me to finally ask for a pay raise, which was granted, but only to $15 per hour.
In conclusion, the appreciation of this company for its workforce really sucks!
The company also failed to notice that the long time top manager at this site was seriously neglecting his job. He pretended to be some kind of auxiliary manager of the shopping mall. Rarely ever did he care about his employees or mingled with his staff. His office was inside the shopping mall management office. Thus, he rarely visited the break room and supervisor office, which are physically very separated from the shopping mall management office. He foremost and almost exclusively talked only with shopping mall management staff or he chatted with on site city police officers, but not with his security staff. He even went so far to do menial work for the shopping mall management like carrying stuff around. It looked weird! Some of my colleagues wondered what is he actually doing for years all day long other than listening to the radio traffic, but his voice is rarely heard on the radio.
Because of this senior security manager on site, the staff break room, the supervisor office, the common kitchen area, staff restrooms, locker rooms were neglected for months. E.g. broken ceiling lights, broken soap dispenser in the lady's restroom, dirty fridge, poor cleaning and upkeep of the common areas and so on.
There is also a second and third senior manager on this site. While the first manager does barely anything, the second one gets involved in work as needed, but not too often. The third manager on site actually does a lot of work but mostly related to surveillance video recordings to document incidents at the mall and he fills in when needed.
Last, but not least: I don't want to brag, but I was probably one of the top 3 security officers at this high profile site. I worked exclusively interior of the mall only on the busiest days, i.e. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. My service was also very appreciated by the Scottsdale police officers of which two PD officers were always on site on weekends during mall hours. E.g. I had build up over time excellent relationships with many of the mall tenants and their employees. Many of them appreciated my work and for going the extra mile. I had gained their trust so they would sometimes come forward etc. I was usually present and responding at many of the incidences of any kind at the mall.
Security services is big global business dominated by less than 10 companies or so (e.g. Securitas AB, Allied Universal, G4S).
However, many of the jobs the security service industry are low tech, low paid, and not too attractive. Take a typical shopping mall security guard in the United States. In the 21st year of the 21st century, he or she will be still equipped with a clunky, analog radio (typically Motorola) and an old fashioned paper notepad plus ballpoint pen. Security guards usually have to memorize all the many procedures applicable (e.g. all valet service locations and their differences), locations of many of the myriad things in a shopping mall (e.g. access to roof hatches for HVAC technicians), many other arcane things, and much, much more.
Of course, the security guard is encouraged to use his or her personal smartphone to e.g. take pictures of an incident and forward it to his or her supervisor by text message.
Supervisors or other security guards still spend enormous amounts of time sitting in front of usually only one or two PCs to enter their daily or incident reports.
Training is frequent, but boring! The security guard gets to sit in front of the one or two PCs in the break room to study text heavy learning material often quite irrelevant to the job at hand.
One of the few consolations to such security guards, police officers still use old fashioned paper notepads as well while attending to e.g. a shoplift. However, they are also frequently equipped with laptop computers and their radios are better.
In brief what a waste of resources and a hit on providing better relevant and comprehensive security for retail businesses.
Equipping these security guards with e.g. tablet computers would significantly improve premise security and all the other related services that security professional provide on a daily basis. With tablets perhaps more shop lifters would be quickly apprehended, more incidents would be better identified, reported for later analysis and better remedies etc.
The security industry is ripe for some serious overhaul to bring them into the 21st century!
