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No Changing of the Guard welcomed by BRC
A requirement for retailers to license in-house security guards would have added nothing but unnecessary costs and bureaucracy, said the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
The Security Industry Authority (SIA) last month announced that it did not find evidence of risk or threat to public protection to justify the Government introducing regulation for in-house licensing. The Government has agreed, requesting that the issue be re-visited in three years time.
The SIA currently licenses guards employed by security firms. Its investigation considered whether there was a case for extending licensing to in-house guards.
Retailing is the UK's biggest employer of in-house guards and the BRC provided extensive evidence to the SIA of the good practice adopted by its members.
In its report the SIA accepts BRC evidence that retailers have very good recruitment processes for security staff, including criminality checks and thorough training. The report has acknowledged that, "Quite often the training is to a much higher standard than the SIA approved training."
British Retail Consortium Director General Stephen Robertson said: "The Government is right to reject licensing for in-house security guards. It would have piled new costs and bureaucracy on to hard-pressed retailers while adding nothing to public protection.
"We told the SIA that licensing could not raise retailers' standards for recruitment and training because they are already higher than the SIA requires. Its report rightly accepts this.
"We're delighted that sense has prevailed. In its report the SIA acknowledges the good practice within retail, dismissing unsubstantiated claims that this is not so.
"Ultimately retailers live or die by their reputation with customers. No responsible retailer would employ security staff who put customers at risk."
Carphone's 'One-Stop' shops
The Carphone Warehouse has been highly commended for innovation in loss prevention and protecting it's products from fraud across Europe in the Retail Week Technology Awards 2009 staged in London last week.
Judges praised Carphone's new bespoke anti-shrink technology that it is rolling out across nine European territories in six languages for 'at-a-glance' measurement and management of its losses and to calculate business risk from procedural non-compliance.
After two years of planning and one year of software writing with The ORIS Group, 'One Stop' is a web-based 'dashboard' system that keeps shrink figures and margin erosion risk constantly in the eye line of the loss prevention team across Europe, as well as sharing data with front line store staff and senior executives.
The Margin Erosion Dashboard (MED) aspect of One Stop highlights the risks of procedural non-compliance in stores and the cost to the overall business. Developed with built-in task and content management tools to allow loss prevention executives to update the key performance indicators (KPIs) measured, the MED calculates, for example, the costs of staff failure to return airtime contract documentation on time or non-compliant contract documentation processes unique to the telecoms sectors and capable of generating financial penalties to the business.
"We are delighted to have come this far and be commended for our work by the judges who recognised the enormous work involved in rolling out 'One-Stop' across our markets concluding with the UK during March 2009. It is a tool that we have developed ourselves with the help of ORIS in order to get what we wanted from a very can-do' company that we have worked with for many years," says Justin Firlotte, European LP & Fraud Support Manager for The Carphone Warehouse.
"There is a risk to the business from non-compliance and the MED is there not to catch people out, but to empower them to proactively look at the risks in a detailed line-by-line and contract by contract way. Also, because it is all in one place it allows the business to manage loss and risk in a way we have not been able to do before. It reduces time because all staff have become more focussed upon delivering savings to the business. We want to reduce internal shrinkage and profit erosion by the end of the year and this tool is helping us to help ourselves."
Each market can write its own KPIs and rank them. It is multi-lingual for our pan-European business which means that it is totally fit for purpose and speaks our language in every aspect of the meaning," he adds.
Andrew Wood, Managing Director and ORIS founder, adds: "The tool also provides a Top 10 stores priority list for the LP teams to regularly visit them and because the data is available to all, LP managers and senior level staff can see how they compare to other areas. One-Stop is intuitive and built to Carphone's own requirements and, as such, adds new levels of flexibility as well as an ability to drill-down into more granular details that the business wanted to help manage shrink and risk."
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