Building on the profile established for the organisation by current chief executive David Dickinson is going to be the foremost task for John Bates when he takes over the BSIA’s leadership next January, alongside “meeting members, talking to them, asking questions and, most important of all, listening to and acting on their answers”.
“The BSIA absolutely must be the voice of its membership,” said Bates in conversation with Security Management Today’s (SMT) Editor Brian Sims. “With the help of his management team and the staff at Kirkham House, David has built the Association into what it is today – a very strong organisation with a clear purpose. The membership needs a voice, and I intend to build on the profile David has created so that we can fashion a Trade Association that’s even stronger on behalf of its members.”
In a post-regulation landscape, some guarding companies have questioned the BSIA’s role. If the Approved Contractor Scheme (ACS) is designed to be a ‘Badge of Honour’ that helps them to win contracts, they say, why should they continue to pay into/support/need the BSIA?
David Dickinson has answered that question in the pages of SMT and the BSIA’s 40th Anniversary Publication, stating that the ACS is a document of standards but cannot be a lobbying instrument in the way that the BSIA can. What are Bates’ thoughts on the matter?
The voice of the membership
“There is a definite place for the BSIA, which has a significant future,” explained Bates. “Regulation is welcome. The BSIA has reasonably adopted a position wherein we believe we should be constructively critical of the Regulator and that will remain the case. We must act as the voice of our members on this issue and, to this end, I want to deliver support, advice and appropriate services to facilitate that goal. I need to listen to what people have to say to me before I can really formulate my own plan of action.”
Bates has been working in the security sector for over 20 years now, having been educated in Cornwall and spending the initial part of his career in the hospitality industry. He originally served with Group 4, who then merged with Falck. Group 4 and Securicor, of course, joined forces in 2002 and, thereafter, the GSL business (for whom Bates now works as director of corporate communications) was ‘spun out’ and bought by equity investors.
Earlier this year, Global Solutions Ltd was bought by G4S for GB pound 355 million. Headquartered in Britain, GSL also operates in Australia and South Africa. Employing 10,000 staff, the company provides security at prisons, immigration centres and juvenile justice facilities. “My roles have ranged from sales and marketing posts through to operations and, more recently, communications,” commented Bates.
Close alignment with the Trade Association
It emerges that Bates was approached for the BSIA role when the organisation consulted with a specialist recruiter tasked to find a successor for David Dickinson. “Group 4 was a founder member of the BSIA and, given that I worked there for so long, I’ve always been conscious of the Association,” suggested Bates. “Indeed, I have worked closely with the BSIA on many occasions. As a company, Group 4 was always keen to lobby for the regulation of the industry. Given that regulation is now law and working in the real world, and my history of contact with the BSIA, it wasn’t a difficult decision to accept the lead role having gone through the normal selection process. I’m both flattered and delighted to have been asked to take on the job, and I fully understand the magnitude of the role.”
Bates is also acutely aware that support services must be delivered to the membership in equal measure. “The different facets of the industry must be seen to support each other. Technology needs people to respond to it. Similarly, security operatives and managers can only do their job to the best of their ability with the support of that technology. While I’m shadowing David in the autumn, I’ll need to canvass as much opinion as I can on this and other issues and then begin to formulate my strategy.”
Bates has had excellent practice of the ‘politician’s role’ which is core to the BSIA chief executive’s position. In April last year, a Guardian Films co-production with BBC One’s Panorama saw an undercover reporter spending five months at HMP Rye Hill in Warwickshire (a Category B jail holding 600 inmates run by GSL). With not one new prison built in the last ten years being State-run, can the private sector really do the job? That was the programme’s basic premise.
To find out the answer to this question, the ‘recruit’ joined Rye Hill as a trainee and, once qualified and ‘on the wings’, saw a prison officer with whom he trained being openly threatened by inmates for enforcing the rules too rigidly. Escalating intimidation – with one warning sent by a prisoner using a senior prison officer as go-between – put the officer in genuine fear for her life. When questioned about this ‘finding’ (among others), Bates’ response was unequivocal and adept.
At the time, he said: “The officer shouldn’t be frightened. She’s fully supported. It’s absolutely first class that she’s trying to apply the rules, but people shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that prisoners seek to coerce staff into making their lives easier. We don’t hide from that fact and this is why, during training, we return to that theme on a regular basis.”
Enviable reputation as a communicator
At lunchtime today, SMT also spoke with David Dickinson. Why is John Bates considered to be the ‘man for the job’? “He has in-depth knowledge and experience of this industry in some of its most complicated forms,” opined Dickinson, who’s currently on well-earned annual leave in the wake of the Association’s hugely successful Annual Luncheon and Security Officer Awards 2008. “John has an enviable reputation as a communicator, which is one of the core skills for this role. Most important of all, though, during the selection process he demonstrated that he wanted the job because he genuinely believes he can make a difference.”
For 14 of his 20 years in the sector, Bates has worked alongside Dickinson, who was quick to reiterate the importance of the BSIA going forward. “The importance of the BSIA’s lobbying role are there for all to see with the results of SaferCash. I think the Annual Luncheon also showed what an excellent relationship the Association has with security minister Vernon Coaker. It’s vital we maintain that link, and I know John will do so.”
For his part, Bates said that he’s looking forward to an “open and constructive” working relationship with info4security and SMT.
SMT will be the first industry journal to carry an in-depth interview with the new BSIA chief executive following his canvassing of the Association’s membership.