INDUSTRY
A report from the NZSA Chair In this report, originally published in the NZSA Annual Report for 2019/20, Board Chairperson Brett Wilson highlights the challenges and achievements of the Association over an unprecedented year. The last 12 months has seen a continuation of the good work done by Gary and his team to make the NZSA not only a strong industry voice but an entity that continues to add value to its membership. Putting the impact of Covid-19 aside (comment on that subject has been done to death) the focus of the last 12 months has been very much long term strategic direction and engagement on matters that affect our industry. On the back of another strong financial result the Association has built on the previous years’ initiatives to bring some ideas to fruition and create new initiatives that will have lasting impact on members and the industry as a whole. Highlights for me were: • Continuation of the MSD employment initiative that resulted in 178 employment placements. Special thanks to Andrea Charlton and Napat Pawapootanon for their commitment in making this project a success. • Consolidation of the Special Interest Groups (SIGs) initiative. The SIGs are enabling wide ranging industry input into a number of important areas such as training for example. • The HR Advisory line went live early this year and makes available expert advice which would otherwise not be nearly as cost effective for our SME sized members in particular. The service has been used on average about 15 times per month since its inception. • The 0800 Speak Up line also went live enabling a confidential reporting service that has been
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particularly welcomed by unions and government partners. • The Security Services in New Zealand Good Practice Guidelines was finally signed off by WorkSafe and the Unions to provide an up to date consistent standard for the guarding sector service delivery. • A small group ably driven by former Association Chairperson Doug McCormick continues the often arduous task of working on relevant NZ/AU standards. At the end of last year the Board took part in a day long strategy session facilitated by an outside consultant. One of the key initiatives to come out of this was the commitment to fund (in conjunction with MSD) the development of a Virtual Reality training platform for the mandatory COA unit standards. It was an initiative that was very robustly debated by the board before being approved but at the time of writing is very close to completion. Personally, this is the high point of board initiatives in my time with the Association. One thing that came out of the situation created by Covid-19 was how easily the security industry can be turned into a political scapegoat. We recently found the reason why there are never enough buses in Auckland .... it’s because the politicians were using them all to throw our industry under them. Part of the reason that got traction was the perception (justified or not) of guard staff and their training and competency. I believe that this VR training initiative will not only revolutionise the way industry training is delivered, it will solve
NZSA Chairperson, Brett Wilson
a number of issues encountered particularly in the regions that guard providers have in sourcing staff training. While there have been some detractors it is clear that there is a huge amount of support from guarding service providers. There is no doubt that historically the guarding sector in particular has under delivered in terms of equipping and training our personnel. This initiative provides an opportunity to provide consistent and easily accessible first stage industry training, but this should simply be the starting point not the end. There is massive potential to build upon this project and provide training that could significantly lift the standards of service delivery across the industry. Finally I would like to thank Gary Morrison for another outstanding year as CEO, supported in no small part by Tacia Strawbridge. Also my personal thanks to the rest of the board who once again gave up their time, their energy and their passion to represent all the members of this great industry.
December 2020/January 2021
