If the answer was the latter, you’ve done your employee and your company a huge benefit. As smart security departments move more towards aligning their own objectives to those of the business of the companies they work for it makes for better return on employee investment and for better employees. If you’re more inclined to promote a front line officer simply because you think they’ve put in enough time and you basically like them, think again.

In the words of Kevin Murphy, director of security operations at Woodbine Entertainment Group, the days of promoting “the good soldier” are over. Murphy believes it is his responsibility to plan for the future of employees, departments, and the company, especially in the event of the unexpected.

“The critical piece in this for my supervisors and managers is that I am not the centre of the universe. If something happened to me someone would have to run my department and I have an obligation to make sure that can happen,” he says.

Murphy’s been through the process of succession planning and has witnessed the benefits of moving to a model that coaches lower-level staff into new roles gradually, giving them a taste of responsibility over time, rather than simply rewarding an employee with a good record, or penalizing bad behaviour by denying promotion.
And while many security departments hire individuals who ultimately have their eye on becoming police officers, Woodbine and others are now focused on finding those interested in developing a career as a security professional in the private sector.

“For a long time we hired aspiring police officers for in-house security officer positions and contract security, but we realized it didn’t hit our service model. We didn’t want a full team of aspiring cops. We want people who are more service-oriented,” says David Hyde, director of security services with Cadillac Fairview.

These changing approaches to staffing were part of a discussion that took place this past June in Toronto at Succession Planning, a Blueprint for Supervisors —a breakfast event sponsored by AFI International and hosted by Canadian Security and ASIS Toronto. The panel discussion included Murphy, Hyde, Tim Pritchard, director with Commissionaires and Brian Robertson of Diligent Security Training and Consulting.

Robertson kicked off the morning by providing his own personal example of how promotions have traditionally been granted in the security industry. Robertson told the audience how 16 years ago at the age of 34 he was attending adult education classes during the day and working a graveyard shift as a security guard for a contract security firm at a large corporate office tower.

“I had been working there seven months when a site supervisor moved on and I was offered his job,” says Robertson.

His pay went from $8/hr to $10/hr. “I found the lure of big money too hard to resist,” joked Robertson.
“I was promoted because the former site supervisor recommended me. This came as a surprise to me because that site supervisor hated me and did little to disguise it,” recalls Robertson.

But the reason Robertson says he was promoted was not because he had been groomed for the job, but rather because the former supervisor told management he was the only guard working at that site who “wasn’t a complete idiot.”

Clearly that shouldn’t be the only criteria for promotion and he says it raises some critical questions for the industry: Are we promoting the right people? Are we preparing line workers for eventual promotion to supervisory roles? The fundamental question, says Robertson, is do we see supervisors as senior officers or as junior managers?

“A supervisor should be viewed as a junior manager, but everything about the way we recruit, select, train and task supervisors means they are senior officers; a lead hand. We tend to select supervisors based on how good they were at being security officers,” he says. “But if their next job is to coordinate, motivate and equip employees are we really doing that properly?”

Woodbine Entertainment and Cadillac Fairview have tackled the succession-planning question with an eye to aligning their hires and employee development with business goals in mind.