Drawing on lessons learned from a number of pilot schemes across the UK and the success of the original piece of work, the interactive guide ‘Motivation within the Security Sector’ provides a set of dedicated tools and practical advice on how to assess motivation within the guard force.
It includes a refined questionnaire survey tool with a robust industry benchmark (800 staff), an Excel analysis spreadsheet that enables organisations to undertake their own data analysis and more honed, practical advice on how to counter issues that affect motivation.
The guidance is available to any security company interested in gaining an enhanced perspective on their security personnel’s motivation, and can be downloaded from the CPNI’s website.
The BSIA has supported this initiative throughout. Many members have been involved by providing Case Studies or by pioneering motivation projects based on the advice.
BSIA members extremely supportive
The BSIA’s project director for 2012, David Evans, commented: “Throughout the development of this project, the BSIA and its members have been very supportive. All our members take great pride in the quality of staff they employ, and recognise the clear benefits associated with gaining an impartial view on the level of motivation within their own security guardforce.”
Evans added: “Motivation is key to ensuring staff retention as well as the delivery of the highest standards of service, so being able to assess it and identify possible room for improvement will benefit private security companies greatly.”
BSIA members MITIE Total Security Management (TSM), OCS Group UK and VSG are just a few of the companies that have piloted the project. Their experiences OF undertaking a motivation project based on the CPNI guidance highlight the considerable benefits to both the host business and staff alike.
Terry Cheese, training and performance specialist at MITIE TSM, said that he has used the guidance and tools from CPNI many times over the last 12 months with different clients.
“On every occasion the results have enabled me to design and deliver training material in an engaging and effective way,” explained Cheese. “The officers themselves who I have spoken to really appreciate that we are bothering to find out how they feel, and are very pleased to see improvements being made as a result.”
Benefit to the company
Phil Budgen, aviation security advisor for OCS, explained how the project has helped his company.
“The CPNI tool has proven to be invaluable at identifying what our staff believe are our strengths, with results from the questionnaires already reinforcing our ongoing initiatives to reward success, share good practice and provide a consistent management response to poor performance.”
Budgen went on to state: “We are working closely with airport police to deliver briefings to our staff. This enhances their role as part of the airport security machine and provides more ‘eyes and ears’ on the ground for the airport police.”
VSG piloted the piece of work on its contract at a major financial institution in Canary Wharf. A representative from the company said that as a business they found that the survey was perfect in giving an action plan for improvement.
“The survey output showed that, while our staff were in general highly motivated, there were some issues to address,” said the company’s representative. “The guidance enabled us to generate and implement an action plan, and a subsequent motivation survey of our staff in 2012 clearly showed where the plan had led to improvements.”