COVERFEATURESECURITY
average age of applicants rising steadily, while more and more existing employees will look to extend their careers well beyond the age of 65. Are we ready for this? What roles do we have to offer the more mature applicant? How can we support existing staff if they choose to stay with us? What new models of security can we develop to suit an increasingly aged workforce? Do we need to develop new ‘low risk’ security markets and posts that our employees can move into as they age? It’s going to become harder to attract younger people as they shrink as a percentage of the wider population. This will make them a more valuable commodity to a wide range of competing industries, and that will come with a cost implication as they come to understand and better appreciate their own value. Yet at the same time, people who have been with the organisation a long time will become increasingly loyal and will hope their position is one for life, so it makes sense to embrace this for the good of the business. Some front line staff will become better suited to administration roles as they age, but no organisation can sustain an ever-increasing administrative function, especially when so many are looking for ways to streamline their back office, so there will be a need to develop new ‘soft’ security solutions for front line staff to move into as they age, perhaps in
low risk deployments where the main purpose of the role is people management, or increasingly in frontof-house reception roles where age, experience, authority and demeanour is a distinct advantage in client facing situations. Front-of-house and reception services is a growing area for the security industry and the popularity of these services suggests there may be other ways in which the core offer from security companies can be further augmented with additional people-facing roles. Technology offers a way to effectively redeploy staff as they get older. As CCTV and monitoring technologies become more ubiquitous, there is an opportunity to offer roles to older staff as controllers, managers, and even installers of systems. These technologies are not reliant on physical fitness and therefore are forgiving of the restrictions that accompany age. Older staff can also be retrained to handle maintenance. And of course older, more experienced staff with many years’ front line experience are perfectly suited to the roles of consultancy and sales, assessing a client organisation’s requirements and advising of the best and most efficient ways to incorporate security, and then assembling packages to suit and even managing the client account.
It is clear that the security industry has a lot of thinking to do that will lead to new models of working, and evolving offers to the marketplace. When thinking about the future of security it is easy to think in terms of emerging technologies or emerging threats such as international terrorism and cybercrime, yet these things are already happening, and the industry is already adept at incorporating them in its thinking. There can very little to surprise us with regards technology or threats, and neither will have that much impact on the fundamental form that security takes.
Yet an ageing population certainly will force change on the industry. It is unavoidable. Regardless of what area of Facilities Management, or indeed what industry you work in, or what service you offer, this challenge faces us all. Service suppliers, retailers, manufacturers, all will need to confront an ageing population, and all will need to think hard about how they can evolve their offer, their environments and their practices to suit. It is best that we all recognise this inevitability and start thinking of how we adapt.
The security and FM industries themselves need to face the inevitability of an ageing population and workforce.
June - July 2016 ThinkingBUSINESS
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