PERSONNEL
Resolving the security skills shortage Brad Small, Gallagher’s Regional Manager, New Zealand & Pacific Islands, speaks with NZSM about addressing New Zealand’s security skills shortage. It’s an issue, he says, we need to own both collectively and as employers. A key issue that the security industry here in Aotearoa shares with the rest of the world is that we are experiencing a prolonged and seemingly intractable skills shortage. “For the last 15 years, we have had a skills shortage and a shortage of highly skilled people in the fire and security sector. Employers daily tell me of their struggles to engage with a younger audience. Very rarely does someone at school decide to seek an apprenticeship or career in the fire and security sector. It is an afterthought, a second career or a recommendation from a family member.” Sound familiar? That was a comment made last month not in New Zealand but by Skills for Security, an initiative in the UK. And it’s not just physical security that’s feeling the squeeze. In the US, according to CSO Magazine, 70 percent of cybersecurity professionals claim that their organisation is impacted by skills shortages in cybersecurity. In 2019, risk modelling specialist RedSeal predicted it would take a decade to fill the cybersecurity skills shortage in the UK.
Brad Small, Gallagher’s Regional Manager, New Zealand & Pacific Islands
42
NZSM
An invisible industry In New Zealand, it seems that kids at school are not thinking ‘security’ when they daydream about what they want to be when they grow up. “If you ask a student who doesn’t want to go to university what trade they might be interested in, the answer might include the building industry, electrical, mechanics, that’s it. I don’t think there’s very good awareness that the security industry exists,” Brad Small, Gallagher’s Regional Manager, New Zealand & Pacific Islands, told NZSM. “I didn’t know about it until I was 22-23, and that was after my degree.” For Mike McKim, Provincial Manager at Aotea Security, the call to join the security industry came at the age of 16. “My father was in the industry, he found me a job in Auckland working for an Armourguard contractor. There was no apprenticeship, nothing, you just become a technician.” But he stresses that his case is in the minority. Parents are more likely, he says, to push a trades-suited child into plumbing or electrical rather than security. “We’ve got an aged technical base in New Zealand, and a lot of them are retiring now,” he observes. “And nothing’s really coming in behind them.” An invisible brand “In three words, the key driver behind the skills shortage in security is the industry’s brand (or lack thereof),” says Brad. “I really think the security industry needs to do a better job of marketing itself - demonstrating what roles are available and raising more awareness about the profession (particularly among teachers and career guidance services).” According to NZSA CEO Gary Morrison, there are a lot of misconceptions about security occupations in the employment market.
April/May 2021
