Security Perspectives 2024: Kieran Mackie of Amulet Security

With growing anti-social behaviour, staff shortages, increasing regulations as well as continued difficult traditions conditions, 2024 promises to be another challenging year for the fire and security industries. In this short interview series, I talk to six industry leaders from different backgrounds about the main issues they face as we head into 2024.

In the first three interviews I spoke to Jamie Allam, CEO of installation and integration firm Amthal Fire & Security, Spencer Marshall, Head of Europe at HID Global and Sarb Sembhi, CTO of cybersecurity firm Virtually Informed.

In this interview I speak to Kieran Mackie, MD of Amulet Security.

“Since the end of the pandemic, we have seen a major growth in the requirement for security services but a real lack of labour provision. I think getting the right people and deploying them has been a struggle for everyone.

In our company, that’s meant we’ve focused on reward and recognition for our employees, including management thankyous, increased appraisals and on the spot rewards. So, if a customer praises an individual member of staff a manager will go straight out and get them a gift voucher and card.

We’ve also recently become an EOT (Employee Ownership Trust) so 51% of our business is now owned by our employees. There really is no better way of showing that you focus on your people than by giving them shares in the business!

Within the physical guarding part of our business, we’re definitely seeing an increased focus on softer skills. While there’s an acceptance that the SIA (Security Industry Authority) training covers off legislative requirements, there is a trend towards a return on investment from a customer service point of view.

For many customers, our security officers are the face of their business – they are the first and last person they see when entering and leaving a building. That means if we don’t treat people the right way then they won’t come back!

One growing part of our business is working with rail companies to manage interactions with young people, some of whom may be involved in county lines drugs operations. It’s a really complex matter, where we are trying to protect the revenue for these companies but also manage the safety of the people travelling on the train.

For example, when you start dealing with children, the interaction changes depending on the time of day. As much as we shouldn’t be allowing people to travel for free, we can’t stop those children from boarding the train because of safeguarding concerns. We have a duty of care to ensure they get home safely rather than wandering around a town centre late at night.

Regarding technology, we are currently looking to partner with a company that has done a lot of work on the New York subway. They use video surveillance showing fare evaders who jump the ticket lines and combine that with facial recognition. However, it doesn’t matter how good the cameras are, or how good the AI is, you will always need people – someone to stop that person and speak to them.

What I hope is that technology enables us to focus on freeing up employees to do a better job. The idea that we can replace all the guards with robots just isn’t true. If anything, the requirement for human interaction since the pandemic is bigger than it has ever been.”