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By now, industry observers will have realised that there’s a concentrated effort by the Security Industry Authority (SIA), the Security Industry Training Organisation (SITO) and the various endorsed Awarding Bodies to move the security sector’s hard-working practitioners towards formal Level 2 qualifications. To date, all of the new awards required for SIA licensing that have been developed and incorporated into the National Qualifications Framework sit at Level 2.

However, they do not constitute a full Level 2 qualification as they are merely the result of a short course (lasting four days) and two exams. This means that there are insufficient guided learning hours to constitute a full qualification. A particular problem when attempting to access funding from the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), which is mainly available to support full National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs).

The main reasons why so many key sector stakeholders are working to formulate the training and qualifications route in the security industry – and ensure that all qualifications sit at Level 2 or higher – are to both support the Government’s skills strategy and to inform the work currently being undertaken by the SIA, in partnership with SITO and industry employers, aimed at determining the specific future skills strategy for the security sector.

The Government’s long-term aim is that all adults be afforded the opportunity to obtain a Level 2 qualification (which is considered the equivalent to five A-C grade passes at GCSE level). The Government believes that gaining skills at Level 2 allows individuals to make better progress at work, and that access to improved training and qualification opportunities will inspire them to take steps on the working world’s development ladder.

There is a School of Thought which states that, for those who achieve qualifications above Level 2, the returns provide a greater incentive to both themselves and their employers when it comes to investing in further skills. This is particularly crucial for the employee’s development, as the ability to improve personal circumstances – such as benefiting from better earnings – are still relatively low up to the attainment of a Level 2 qualification.

Robust and substantial skills base

The big challenge for SITO, the SIA – which, as the regulator of certain sectors, does not yet have a complete overview of all the industry’s skills requirements – and their industry partners is to construct a robust and substantial skills base that will engage employees, inspiring them to develop themselves and, at the same time, support a sustainable enterprise environment for their employers. Not an easy challenge in today’s operational climate.

So where does the process begin? Arguably, it could begin in a number of areas. A good place to start is with National Occupational Standards (NOS). In the absence of a Sector Skills Council (SSC), SITO remains – among other things – the NOS ‘devising body’ for the security industry and associated sectors. This is a role the organisation has fulfilled since 1990, but only during the past three years (largely thanks to funded contracts with the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and the Sector Skills Development Agency, and with support from the SIA) has it had a major impact on educational thinking in the sector.

New NOS have been developed for close protection, Cash-and-Valuables-in-Transit (CvIT) and security dog handling, while other development projects cover key holding and response, port security, civil enforcement, consultancy and security/risk management.

Nonetheless, there remains some confusion as to the purpose of NOS. Put simply, they are designed to serve as specifications of competence in employment, benchmarks for occupational performance and statements of industry Best Practice.

NOS are developed by SITO. SITO acts as a ‘custodian’ of the standards alongside – and on behalf of – the security industry, reflecting what the latter wants in terms of a competent workforce. Although the different sectors of the industry – including security guarding, close protection, door supervision, CVIT, CCTV operation, dog handling and civil enforcement, etc – usually write their draft standards in different formats, they will all have the same characteristics. These include:

• identifying main roles and responsibilities within a defined occupational area;
• showing the outcomes of competent performance, including the essential knowledge and understanding required;
• showing the standard of occupational competence to be reached for the stated outcomes;
• specifying the relevant technical, planning and problem-solving skills, the ability to work with others and skills that enhance flexibility in employment and progression opportunities.

NOS are not just useful for measuring performance. They can also be employed to specify that performance and determine what level of competence employers want from their employees, thereby enabling them to verify that they’re achieving at that level. The good news is that the SIA hasn’t tried to ‘second guess’ and develop standards to impose upon industry. The Authority has duly recognised the crucial importance of NOS, mapping all of its Core Competency Specifications against the relevant sector NOS whenever (and wherever) appropriate. In this way, the SIA makes sure the industry still has its say in the skills strategy.

When employees reach the required level, the Awarding Bodies offer qualifications based upon the NOS for the purpose of formal recognition. The security industry is now very fortunate to have the ability to choose from a number of the leading Awarding Bodies, such as City & Guilds, BTEC and the National Open College Network (NOCN). Qualifications are offered to support the SIA’s licensing requirements from an increasing number of excellent training providers, many of whom are experts in their chosen field.

A hugely encouraging sign is that many service providers across the security guarding and technical professions are now beginning to launch their own Security Academy or Centre of Excellence in support of employee development – a sure indication of increasing employer commitment to investing in their people. This is very refreshing indeed.

It isn’t that companies in the security industry have totally failed to invest in training and development, but rather that market issues and other operational barriers have given rise to limited investment. Many security companies still feel that returns on staff development are uncertain, particularly in a highly evanescent workforce situation such as that prevailing in this sector.

Through SITO’s own training delivery, more than 350 trainers have qualified via City & Guilds with the Level 3 Certificate in Delivering Learning, while over 500 trainers have achieved the SITO/Maybo Certificate in Conflict Management Training (which, in the second quarter of this year, will give full ‘Grandfather Rights’ for the all-new City & Guilds Level 3 Conflict Management Trainers qualification). It almost goes without saying that both of these qualifications have also been based on NOS, which were developed by the Further Education NTO (FENTO) and the Employment NTO (ENTO).

Using NOS to map out competency requirements and develop appropriate qualifications undoubtedly assists the industry with practical, day-to-day skills development, but what about a more strategic and holistic view? How might the SIA assist the security industry to develop a true skills strategy that will support its wider business objectives?

Positioning the security industry

A number of things can – and need to – be done with the support of our regulator if we’re to position our industry where it belongs as a recognised provider of essential services, a key authoritative and strategic partner to Government and as a priority sector of investment for Government departments such as the DTI and the LSC.

At SITO, we believe that poor labour market information is a significant barrier to progress. This can be attributed to the fact that security-related professions do not show themselves in most official surveys in any meaningful way and that, when seeking to identify the number of individuals employed in the industry, several challenges – and, indeed, difficulties – may be encountered.

For instance, census data is largely unhelpful, as are the Standard Industry Codes (SIC) and Occupational Classification Codes (OCC) even when linked to data held by the National Statistical Office. For example, the SIC and SOC for the security industry are more than 20 years out of date and do not describe the sub-sectors as we know them, engendering problems with the creation and analysis of data. This effectively means that our industry isn’t even on the ‘priority radar’, despite the fact that security-related professions are some of the fastest growing in the world.

SITO believes that a new Functional Map must be established to incorporate all of the professions that are now accepted as constituting the security and risk management sectors. Thereafter, a comprehensive research project should be conducted to establish the size, configuration and demographics of the sector, at the same time analysing future employment trends. This work will need to be carried out concurrently with substantial service provider research to identify the strategic business direction of the industry and its ensuing skills and productivity needs.

Once this has all been completed, we can demonstrate to the funding bodies that our industry is made up of a number of priority sub-sectors. We can then begin to access some of that desperately-needed funding support. In the interim, however, we must deal with that which is currently accessible.

Employer Training: the pilot projects

In 2003, the Government launched its own skills strategy to maximise the contribution of skills to raising productivity, economic competitiveness and sustainable employment in the UK. The LSC now has a range of initiatives to help businesses develop a skilled workforce while achieving key commercial objectives (such as retaining employees, reducing overheads and increasing profit margins).

Several of these initiatives are aimed at giving every individual a strong foundation in skills, and to make it easier for businesses to re-skill their people. One such initiative is the Employer Training Pilots (ETPs).

ETPs offer basic numeracy and literacy training and opportunities to study for NVQs at Level 2. The pilots offer SMEs access to funding to help them train their staff and provide – in some cases, at least – compensation for the time that employees will need to take off work to accommodate their training programme.

SITO has co-ordinated three successful pilots in the Birmingham and Solihull, Black Country and London East regions, and is now working in other areas to identify companies that could benefit from such assistance.

During the first pilot, SITO was able to demonstrate that NVQ Level 2 was impractical and unworkable within the contract security guarding profession, and instead managed to secure funding support for the City & Guilds Level 2 Professional Security Officer examination-based qualification.

The difficulties in successfully implementing NVQs in the security industry have been significant and far-reaching and, as a result, for a number of years registrations – and more importantly completions – have been at an all-time low. The flexibility demonstrated in the ETPs and the growing interest from service providers in more user-friendly, workplace activity-based approaches to learning also highlighted the potential for a new direction.

Using the new Level 2, SIA-required awards as a base point (or first unit), it’s now entirely feasible that a new suite of workplace-based vocational qualifications could be developed.

At SITO, we believe that employers working in partnership with employees should drive the development of this new qualification approach. It must be structured around an holistic assessment method that takes into consideration existing workplace activity, incorporate elements of training and demonstrate without any shadow of doubt that an individual is competent. Naturally, it must also meet LSC requirements such that funding levels are maximised.

In developing training schemes, qualifications and a wider skills strategy, the opportunities offered by the Government’s Plural Policing Strategy should also be explored. Increasingly, skills transferability is becoming an essential component of all skills frameworks. Many highly successful examples of such transferability already exist – Project Griffin in the City of London is a good case in point. Any opportunity that arises whereby security practitioners can have a more formal dialogue with their police and/or military services colleagues should be explored.

Skills development at the operational level is not the only area that will demand our attention as time goes by. As is the case with most industry sectors in the UK, analysts in the security sector are beginning to identify ineffective leadership as a key skills issue. Numerous national surveys have attested to the shortfall in high quality leadership and management skills on home shores.

At a time when the security industry is undergoing the largest transformation it has ever experienced, strong leadership must be considered more important than ever before (particularly within smaller companies that may be struggling to compete). Yet generic research recently carried out by Demos reveals that smaller companies with potentially the most to gain from developing more professional leaders and managers are least likely to do so.

Wider skills strategy of Government

In 2003, the Council for Excellence in Leadership and Management produced a report which set out recommendations for addressing the management and leadership challenge as part of the Government’s wider skills strategy. One of the problems the report identified was a lack of financial support for the leaders and managers of companies within the 20-250 employees category. A more sinister problem was the absence of an effective support network signposting development solutions best suited to the needs of both company and individual.

Across the security guarding sub-sector , it’s accepted that there could be as many as 2,500-plus companies operating in the market, with the majority falling into the above category.

The good news is that a number of organisations have responded with a variety of supporting initiatives. For example, the LSC has launched its own Leadership and Management Programme which targets the directors of such small businesses by making available to them anything up to £1,000 for skills assessments and training.

Above all, the industry’s transformation must begin with a transformation of our learning culture, which is vital to our future success. However, this will only be achieved if employers are driving the changes needed – for themselves, their employees, their businesses and the wider industry.