Maybe not the best paid, usually chronically overworked, and sometimes used and abused by senior strategic management, operations managers, or whatever title their employers use, are without doubt the most critically important roles in any security guarding services company.
No role in the security industry will be as varied, involve so much travel, or shoulder more responsibility. Many security operations managers will be promoted from supervisory roles after they have stood out from the crowd for organisational ability or enthusiasm. Most will look after a portfolio of sites, normally somewhere between 10 and 30, depending on geographical location, type, and client requirements.
The Two Core Responsibilities of a Security Operations Manager
The security operations manager will have numerous duties and responsibilities, but the two key functions will never change:
- To develop and maintain an excellent professional relationship with the client’s management.
- To ensure all security officers working for you are motivated, are performing well, and that their welfare needs are addressed in a timely fashion.
No small ask, and as you can see, failure in either of these basic responsibilities can lead to huge damage to the business, hence the absolutely critical importance of the role.
The Importance of Structured Onboarding and Training
Enthusiasm and past performance, however, do not make a great operations manager. Woe betide the security company that hires or promotes a new operations manager and just lets them ‘get on with it’. A new operations manager will, at the very least, require a couple of weeks shadowing an experienced, existing team member to get a feel for the way a new company works and what it expects.
Most of the best security companies, recognising the importance of the position, will create some form of professional development plan, which will include dedicated training to absolutely ensure that the operations manager has all the skills and knowledge they will need to cope with the many and varied challenges that they will face.
Check out this guide on smooth onboarding processes to facilitate hiring.
Key Duties and Daily Responsibilities
So, what will an operations manager find themselves doing on a daily basis? This list should give you some idea of the breadth of duties that will be performed on a regular basis, but is by no means conclusive:
Manage Client Relationships
- Regular, at least weekly, site progress visits and discussions with client management.
- Identifying and advising on service improvement ideas.
- Providing subject matter expert guidance to clients on industry news and best practices.
- Develop an in-depth knowledge of all contractual agreements within your portfolio, ensuring that all service-level agreements are met at all times.
- Monitoring agreed contract KPIs and ensuring that the security service provided meets or exceeds all reasonable client expectations.
- Liaising with your operations director and client leadership to arrange monthly KPI assessment and progress meetings.
- Investigating and reporting on any incident involving contract security on any site in your portfolio.
- Keeping site Assignment Instructions and related paperwork up to date.
- Ensuring that all equipment provided for security use is present and operational.
Recommended Read: Prioritising Client Relationships
Facilitate Security Officer Welfare & Performance
- Performing final interviews of all security officers recruited for your sites.
- Performing employee incident investigations.
- Performing employee disciplinary hearings.
- Advising HR on post-hearing disciplinary actions.
- Ensuring that all new starters have had a company induction session.
- Ensuring that all new starters have had a site induction and suitable training.
- Perform and record regular face-to-face welfare meetings with all security officers.
Tips for Security Operations Managers
Ideally, face-to-face welfare meetings for every security officer should take place at least once per month. If not possible, then an absolute maximum gap of 2 months should be observed. As a last resort, a telephone welfare check on a monthly basis should be performed if you can’t get to see an officer. This usually requires a morning at the end of each month set aside to ensure you have at least spoken to all of your people.
Make yourself available to all security staff to address and resolve any welfare issues reported. (It is worth noting that the best contract/operations managers make themselves the single port of call for all routine staff enquiries, including pay queries, uniform issues and leave applications. Nothing builds respect faster than dealing with your employees’ issues diligently and in a timely manner.)
Identify enthusiastic and capable security officers who may want or deserve advancement, and place them on appropriate professional development plans. The importance of this can not be overstated, as nothing boosts morale or engenders loyalty more than promoting worthy staff.
Perform regular ‘toolbox talks’. These are short, on-site, training sessions and can be on a variety of relevant subjects such as powers of arrest, dealing with trespassers, talking to the media, dealing with social media ‘auditors’, any new site rules, or any changes to SIA licensing or regulations.
Managing Time, Risk and Integrity
As you can see, there is far more to the job than getting on with your staff and impressing clients. Time management and accurate record-keeping are essential skills.
You will probably need to give a short monthly presentation to your company management, detailing what you have been doing, and have accurate figures to hand. Meticulous record keeping is also potentially job and contract saving if you need to defend against allegations of failings or professional negligence.
Thankfully, this doesn’t happen often, but dubious security companies have been known to pass brown envelopes full of cash to client representatives for their assistance in sabotaging a contract so that their company can win it at renewal time. If you can disprove malicious allegations against your company, it may not save the contract, but it will highlight the suspect behaviour of the accuser.
The Buzz of Operations Management
So, operations management can be tough. It is certainly highly responsible. But, and this is felt by all good ops managers, there is a distinct ‘buzz’ when you solve a big problem or are praised by a client for your exceptional work. That buzz is addictive and is the main reason that so many top managers stay in this role way past the point at which they would have been promoted to operations director.
If you love variety, enjoy problem solving, have great communication skills, and know how to interact with people at all professional levels, maybe this role is for you.
Empower Your Security Operations Manager with GuardPass
The role of a security operations manager is demanding, but with the right support, it becomes a driver of excellence. GuardPass simplifies every step, from hiring licensed officers to vetting and onboarding, so your operations managers can focus on leading teams, not chasing paperwork.
Ready to strengthen your operations? Discover how GuardPass can help.