When the Manager Is the Problem: Power, Accountability and Why Discrimination Goes Unresolved in Private Security
Introduction: The finding the industry would rather not discuss
In every case, there comes a moment when all the comfortable lines have been exhausted. This happens at a precise numerical threshold in the cases of private security and equity. On being asked by SIF Member Discrimination Survey about their source, those who had faced discrimination revealed a majority were caused by someone from inside – the very person charged with setting the rules in the first place. Of those, 38% came from their managers, 27% from members of the general public and 22% from colleagues.
The sheer magnitude of that number should bring the discussion to a halt, as it completely contradicts what the industry has always assumed. Instead of seeing discrimination as something carried out against the organization by external actors, it turns out that in the majority of cases, those in charge of enforcing the rules end up breaking them themselves.
This particular set of data had gone largely unexamined in previous articles of this series. It warrants attention not because managers are necessarily bad people, but rather because it represents a fundamentally different type of problem.
Why manager-source discrimination is a different problem
Where discrimination is perpetrated by members of the general public, the worker has the support of an organisation; where it is committed by colleagues, there is a superior to complain to; and when it is committed by the management, the very structure that is designed to provide protection turns into its antithesis – a mechanism that works to further entrench the power dynamic between worker and management, where the very mechanisms that workers might rely on to protect themselves will be controlled by the very individuals they wish to complain against.
Within private security, the power that rests within managers and contract supervisors is particularly concentrated. It is the supervisor that controls who is assigned to which sites, who receives overtime, who is considered worthy of training and who gets references. Crucially, it is also the person who determines what action should be taken regarding complaints against that supervisor – the worker’s livelihood depends entirely on whether they are assigned duties. Furthermore, the precarious position of workers in private security means that the worker is often just another disposable asset to be dispensed with if it suits the management.
This is why the 38% cannot be read as a scatter of isolated incidents. It describes a power asymmetry. And it explains the second number that should trouble the industry just as much.
A complaints system that confirms the worst expectations
The vast majority of workers that have been discriminated against reported it – a total of 69%. This is where the indictment comes in. In less than half of these cases (38%) was the matter solved. The other 62%, however, did not get resolved at all, or partially.
Now compare these figures with the percentage of those who actually reported the issue. The conclusion is clear. These are not employees that kept quiet on the matter but people who stepped up, often taking considerable risks, and yet in almost 60% of all cases they did not get anything back from it. The message the labor force received from these statistics is obvious and carries well enough for 82% of the respondents to have experienced discrimination themselves (a much higher number than the number of people who have actually encountered it) and for 77% to believe that discrimination is rampant within the entire sector.
There is a unique form of brutality to a complaints system which exists but does not function. A staff without such a process has certainty regarding its position. A staff with an effective process which produces absolutely nothing finds out that appearance has replaced actuality – and loses faith completely.
Why policy has not fixed it
The typical response to such results is to refer to the existing measures. Large security firms typically have their equality policy. Most of them offer equality training. Most of them have grievance procedures. No element is missing. Even seventeen years since the formation of the Security Industry Authority, with all this in place, discrimination in the industry is still considered by almost three-quarters of its employees to be systemic.
The trouble, therefore, lies not in lack of knowledge, but in policy without measurement and impact. A grievance procedure which logs the complaints made by employees but never analyzes them and tracks their processing up until sanctions are imposed for those responsible for them does not constitute accountability – it amounts merely to documentation. Equality training attended by a manager once only, with no further review, is just adding an entry to his record, not changing the culture. The missing part is the teeth: data on whose complaints have been made, set deadlines for processing them, effective means of protecting whistleblowers, and disciplinary actions in case of a manager’s recurring involvement in incidents of discrimination.
Accountability as a professional standard, not an HR favour
Herein lies the relevance of the manager problem to the broader argument of the campaign. As long as the behaviour of managers is left as a Human Resources issue, it will remain a discretionary one – one that is dealt with behind closed doors and inconsistently and typically in the manager’s favour due to their greater control and influence over the process. The change that needs to occur is to bring the issue of accountability away from being a discretionary issue within HR and into the definition of professional competence itself.
In the Security Science Professionalisation Matrix, supervisory and management positions are defined at Level 5 and higher. In the model, DEI competence is an integral part of the level requirements and not an addition. Thus, the manager that becomes a repeating problem of harassment, discrimination, etc., will not be simply an issue for HR to deal with. Instead, they will be someone who is practicing professionally at a level below what is required, and such can have serious implications for their position and professional career.
This is a conceptual shift that precedes being procedural. Where before there was a “bad apple” mindset, in which each occurrence could be seen as an isolated mistake that was both unfortunate and finite, this new professional stance states that the authority to have control over other workers should be contingent upon using this power non-discriminatorily. This is the case for every mature profession. If someone is constantly abusing those around them, this behavior will not continue to allow that person their status regardless of how informal the abuse is.
What this means for the professionalisation claim
What an industry may endure without losing its title of development is considerable. Yet what an industry cannot endure if it aspires to professionalism is a stable system where the most influential in the industry have the capacity to victimize the most vulnerable with little chance of facing any repercussion, and where whistleblowers reporting that abuse find deaf ears. This is not a flaw in what would otherwise be a professional system, but rather a flaw at the very heart of it.
The general public is now paying attention. Clients, increasingly major clients, do not simply assess whether or not their contractors can perform their services; rather, they are looking into how those organizations treat their employees. Regulatory bodies are now being asked more and more to evaluate workforce conduct under competence. It is explicitly clear under the Safe Site framework that manager accountability and complaints resolution are precisely the factors on which Safe Sites and Accredited Employers hinge. There is no question about the trend: the way a company manages its discriminatory manager is turning into a professional issue.
Conclusion: The test the industry has been avoiding
It is simpler to discuss the topics of representation, progress and the business case than it is to admit, in plain terms, that, based on existing evidence, the individuals who wield the greatest influence within private security are precisely the sources of most discrimination and, further, that the mechanism designed to tackle this problem fails in over six in ten of all cases referred to it for investigation. However, any campaign that argues EDI is professional infrastructure must also be prepared to examine that portion of the infrastructure that appears to be beyond repair.
Accountability of managers is that aspect. Managerial responsibility is where issues such as power, conduct and accountability intersect, where the industry makes its claim to professionalism and either backs up this assertion or quietly renounces it. Setting standards, timetables, accountability and consequences is not an assault on managers, but the means through which management power becomes legitimate. As long as the industry is unwilling to hold the powerful individuals within it accountable for the same reasons it holds others responsible, it will have no choice but to confirm what its employees think and continue to professionalise without becoming professional.