Reconnecting our business

 G4S Secure Solutions Ireland Managing Director Alan Durnan reviews his first year with the company and the changes they have gone through.

G4S Secure Solutions Ireland is one of Ireland’s largest security companies. We offer a range of different services from manned guarding and patrols to security systems and monitoring. We have five offices throughout Ireland and employ over 2,000 people delivering our range of services nationwide.

In 2014, G4S recognised the need to change its focus in the Irish security services market. Over the past 18 months the company has gone through a significant restructure. We recognised where we needed to improve, with a particular focus on employee engagement and customer service, and we initiated a radical change process at every level of the business.

Customer focus is a core value within the G4S organisation and we aim to have close, open relationships with our customers that generate trust as we work in partnership for the mutual benefit of our organisations. We had to acknowledge that there was a disconnect developing with some of our customers and a perceived lack of value add on their behalf. In line with our company value of best people we recruited experienced, security industry contract managers into the business and a policy of direct engagement with staff and customers was initiated to increase customer and employee satisfaction.

To ensure this focus remains in place we now complete a bi-annual survey with customers across our business to understand satisfaction levels and areas where we deliver value. We use the feedback to highlight areas for improvement within our operation.

I also travel on a monthly basis to all of the offices and meet both local based staff and customers to ensure the focus of being close to employees and customers remains a priority agenda item in the business and to ensure we are best placed to respond immediately to any customer issues.

We are now seeing the benefit of this focus within the business through stronger customer retention and new sales in the latter half of this year.

We have invested in technology with the roll out of OMS to track customer engagement and KPI scoring and deployed a new state of the art patrol system, Securetrax, which enables security officers to tag in at specific locations during their patrols to record critical site information. Our scheduling system was replaced with Signet to improve pay and billing accuracy. We have also rolled out a new Employee Self Service (ESS) portal to allow staff to check pay slips and rosters in real time with the functionality to apply for holidays, extra overtime etc.

In addition to the services I manage, we also have a Fire & Security Systems business which provides services and products such as CCTV, Fire Detection Systems and Remote Monitoring to name a few. We employ 80 engineers and have 40,000 connections into our Alarm Monitoring Centre based in Citywest. The combined offering of our products and services allows customers to get a fully integrated security solution from one provider; G4S. 

This year we have really seen the benefits of offering a bundled security solution to the market place. Innovation is something that’s key to most businesses and G4S are recognised as the market leaders for Innovative Security solutions. The Smart Tower for example is a rapid deployment mobile CCTV tower that includes built-in 4G CCTV image transmission for remote viewing, recording and control. It also features a loud speaker through which G4S monitoring staff can provide verbal warnings to trespassers. The Smart Tower can be deployed to specific sites and erected in hours. It is the ideal solution on construction and temporary sites. There is no need for infrastructure such as cabling, ducting etc.

We recognised a need in the construction industry for a self-powered, site boundary security system that doesn’t rely on mains power. As a result of this we introduced hydrogen cells to power the Smart Tower, offering an environmentally friendly solution to our clients who are conscious of their carbon footprint. This system can be monitored by the security officers on site with back-up contingency of remote monitoring from our alarm monitoring centre. This solution has been awarded the Innovation in Security award at the 2015 Irish Security Industry Association (ISIA) Awards.

G4S have also recently switched over to the Google for Work platform globally with over 70,000 connections. This has had huge benefits for us the main one being it is now extremely easy for us to collaborate with our colleagues not only in Ireland but across the world.

Our key differentiator however will always be our frontline security, technical and cleaning personnel. It is important for me to always be accessible to our people, to reinforce our core values that set us apart from our competitors and to reiterate the value they bring to our business. The introduction of the Star of the Month programme was designed to recognise an employee each month for living one of the company’s core values; customer focus, expertise, performance, best people, integrity, teamwork, care and safety first. Through this programme we get great feedback from customers about the great work our employees have carried out. I’m also proud that one of our employees was awarded the Security Supervisor of the Year award at the 2015 Irish Security Industry Association (ISIA) Awards. Another three employees were also selected as finalists in the Event Security Person of the Year, Electronic Security Supervisor of the Year and Electronic Security Technician of the Year categories. To be recognised at an industry standard is a great achievement for our employees.

In 2015 the transformation of G4S has been dramatic and swift, delivering solid results. Our people were critical in this transformation and will again be central to delivering strong growth forecasted for 2016.

Contact:

G4S Secure Solutioins Ireland

Email: info@ie.g4s.com

Tel: 1890 447 447