G4S
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G4S AFRICA
Top Employer
Status Secured PRODUCTION: Manelesi Dumasi
Yet again, G4S Africa has claimed international recognition as one of the continent’s best employers. It creates opportunities for employees, nurtures them, and allows them to flourish in a secure career. Regional President, Mel Brooks talks to Enterprise Africa to explain more about the significance of this, a sixth consecutive Top Employer award. www.enterprise-africa.net / 3
INDUSTRY FOCUS: SECURITY
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Rewind 17-months, back to 2016, Enterprise Africa spoke to G4S Africa Regional President Mel Brooks and asked what makes the behemoth pan-African security business unique, and what keeps it ahead of its competitors. Unequivocal in his reply: “Our people”. “I believe that the great work our employees do to ‘secure your world’ and their continuous efforts to ‘live’ our company values strengthens our image and supports us in unremittingly providing expert services to our customers,” he said. And that view hasn’t changed through to today with Brooks telling us that the business has, once again, been named as one of the continent’s Top Employers – a title reserved for audited organisations that create excellent conditions for their people.
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In October 2017, G4S Africa was present at an awards ceremony celebrating a sixth consecutive Top Employer award. Brooks is delighted to receive the recognition as one of Africa’s Top Employers 2018 and says that the benefits are widespread. “It’s an acknowledgment of people practices that have been honed over a number of years. It motivates us to do more and more, and a lot of our customers really appreciate the fact that we empower our employees and treat them with respect so it’s not only for our own benefit but it’s there to benefit our customers as well.” The Amsterdam-based Top Employers Institute conducts research into HR excellence all over the world and said of G4S Africa’s offering: “G4S provides exceptional employee conditions, nurtures and develops talent throughout
all levels of the organisation and has demonstrated its leadership status in the HR environment, always striving to optimise its employment practices and to develop its employees.” And it’s not just at continental level – the awards are focussed around performance in individual territories. “It’s important to us particularly in the Africa context to be recognised as a sustainable and responsible employer,” says Brooks. “They look at how we empower and develop our employees and we are hugely proud of the fact that we have gone from nine certificates in 2013 to 13 in 2018, maintaining that award in each of those countries. It’s something that I believe contributes to our employee environment. We’ve recently conducted an employee engagement survey and more than 80% of our people responded which is a phenomenal response. We have
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INDUSTRY FOCUS: SECURITY
// WE ARE HAPPY THAT WE HAVE BETTER THAN AVERAGE EMPLOYEE RETENTION FIGURES – PEOPLE JOIN US, THEY’RE HAPPY, AND THEY STAY WITH US // regular interaction with our employees whether it’s through polling, through one-to-one engagement, or through line management feedback,” he adds. As the only private security company in Africa to be given accreditation, G4S Regional HR Director, Stanley Blythe was delighted, saying: “It’s a fantastic acknowledgement of our best people practice efforts, which will only motivate us to reach even further heights of HR excellence in future. G4S takes great pride in the creativity and diversity of our talented people and strive to create a safe and
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value-driven environment that provides opportunities for growth, innovation and a sustainable future for all.” Brooks says that the company’s positive HR strategy has resulted in the long-term retention of people. “Our business is defined by the high standards and expertise of our people,” he says. “We employ high-quality people, we screen those individuals, we give the best training possible and we give oversight and supervision, setting our employees up for success in career development. The security industry is potentially the first formal employment for a number of people and we aspire for people to continue their career with G4S but in the event that they move on, we are happy to have given them a sustainable platform to go forward. We are happy that we have better than average employee retention figures – people join us, they’re happy, and they stay with us. “I’m delighted that we have a number of long-serving employees, even people who started as security officers and are now Financial Directors – it’s a credit to the organisation, how
we identify talent and bring that into the business.” Top Employers Institute CEO, David Plink praised G4S, saying: “Our extensive research concluded that G4S Africa forms part of a select group of employers that advance employee conditions worldwide. Their people are well taken care of. Now that they have received the Top Employers Africa 2018 certification, they can truly consider themselves at the top of an exclusive group of the world’s best employers. Reason to celebrate.” Globally, G4S employs close to 585,000 people. Across Africa, more than 110,000 work for G4S, and the company services around 75,000 customers across 25 countries. FUTURE TECH, NOW Like many industry sectors, security is one in which technology is playing an increasingly important role – this goes without saying. But instead of cutting staff and replacing them with tech, G4S is using modern technology to complement its workforce, “that is most definitely the case,” says Brooks. “New technologies and innovation in our systems lines is part of our plan, to
G4S AFRICA
be introduced wherever possible. When you think of manned security and cash solutions, we augment them wherever we can with technology and we will continue to do so. Sometimes it’s to augment our current service provision, so tech becomes an enabler to a service, and sometimes it’s purely systems themselves for a customer - be that building integration, access control, fire control, or any type of system.” But, even with innovation providing efficiency improvements, the people element of the G4S business remains of significant importance. “We have a very large alarm monitoring and response business across Africa where both residential and business customers rely on us to have an automated alarm system with a response provided by ourselves or by a third party. “There is the potential for technology to not only support our customers but also our employees. We’re looking at remote supervision using tech cameras so that we can monitor our security officers, help them check-in and provide guidance remotely, particularly in remote areas. It’s an ongoing innovation programme that
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we have and our cash business is founded on the introduction of greater technology. “We constantly invest in our people, technology and innovation – attributes that our customers both expect and admire. This results in security services coming under cost pressures, and the arbitrage between labour and technology continues to close. In many cases the technology is now a more efficient way to deliver a service compared to physical manpower. It’s a requirement from the customer not only from a cost perspective but also a service delivery perspective, and from our own perspective for innovating our services,” explains Brooks. Perhaps one of the finest examples of business innovation in recent years is the G4S Cash management division which has provided a number of pioneering devices to aid in the collection, security and organisation of
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cash. Particularly, G4S Deposita, a truly South African business, has been at the heart of this inventive culture. Back in September 2017, we spoke to G4S Deposita President, Christo Terblanche, who detailed how the business had recently seen phenomenal growth (2526% between 2014-2016) thanks to the success of devices like Cash360, ABM and Mini-Pay among others. Brooks is proud to export this knowledge and expertise worldwide. “South Africa is the intellectual hub, particularly for the hardware aspects, of what we call Cash360 – management of the cash lifecycle for our customers,” he says. “We have established an entity called Deposita International, which is based on intellectual property and from that platform, we are servicing the rest of the world. This is all about innovating in
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// WHATEVER WE DO, WE HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE THREATS AND RISKS TO OUR CUSTOMERS // the customer’s space. The way that cash moves, the velocity at which it moves, the cost of moving it – we are acutely aware of our customers’ needs and servicing those needs to improve efficiencies. We’ve expanded the product range from basic deposit machines to mini deposit machines, bank branch automation machines, and even recycling machines that take cash in and recycle cash out. These products work in retail banking, small retail environments and wherever cash moves. It’s a continued drive for Africa and the rest of the world – cash automation is an area where we have really applied focus. We also draw on innovation from North America, Europe and Asia markets.” The success of G4S Deposita, coupled with that of the wider group, is clear for all to see. G4S CEO Ashley Almanza said in November’s Trading Update (for nine months ending 30 September 2017) that ‘organic revenue growth was 4.4%, with all regions growing apart from the Middle East and India region. Organic revenue growth excluding Middle East and India was 6.1% for the first nine months’. Brooks says that Africa specifically is also performing well. “We’ve had a good year and we continue to grow above the inflation rate. We are managing our profit and our costs and collecting cash in Africa. There’s a variable payment culture in Africa and we manage through that as well, but notwithstanding that, we are growing organically and there’s a lot of opportunity in the places that we operate to expand our operations significantly. That is what we are seeking to do and what we have been doing very successfully. “Across Africa, especially East and
G4S AFRICA
North Africa, we are growing very fast. We’re seeing that within our businesses, particularly in those regions, we are being approached by more customers and seeing our accounts grow,” he says. UNDERPINNING SECURITY IN AFRICA Industry reports suggest that, in South Africa alone, the private security industry is worth some-R45 billion annually and that a distrust in the country’s already stretched police force is a big driver of that figure. Security agents regularly put themselves in danger and, with crime figures still comparatively high, it is now becoming more obvious than ever that it pays to partner with an experienced, reputable and results driven organisation, that can complement local law enforcement wherever possible. “As an organisation, we seek to work with the security and law enforcement agencies,” says Brooks. “We are not a law enforcement agency, we are there to augment security operations around the continent. The reality is, the issues in these countries are attributed to economic and socio factors and we seek to work alongside the police to understand where our customers seek private support over law enforcement support, and typically that is where we operate 24/7 at the customer’s premises alongside them. It is really important that we work alongside local law enforcement and authorities accordingly. Whatever we do, we have to understand the threats and risks our customer faces. The cash business is an area that attracts a certain element of the criminal fraternity and we work with the police to better understand that, so a close working relationship is very important.” But with such a large market in South Africa, G4S are not alone in the provision of security services – the large number and large size of contracts on offer attracts big-name firms from all over the world. So, what sets the company apart in an extremely competitive and cut-throat environment? First-class service and historic local success says Brooks.
Mel Brooks - Regional President - Africa
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INDUSTRY FOCUS: SECURITY
“It hasn’t been an overnight activity; it’s taken a long time to achieve the success that we have now,” he admits. “We have a longstanding business across the region and around the world and that means we are able to operate a premium service to a set of customers that want and respect that service. Being able to provide that level of operation in such a wide number of countries is not without its complications and challenges. As an organisation, what we seek to do is provide the same level of service irrespective of the territory that you are residing in. So, it’s not only scale and knowledge, we also offer local knowledge for the environment in which we’re operating. That comes from local management and local expertise. We work alongside some very competent and capable competitors and I welcome the fact that we have compliant companies working alongside us – that is a good thing. Having said that, we also
work alongside competitors that are not compliant with local legislation and don’t deliver quality service and they still manage to maintain large areas of the market. But the customers they attract are not the customers that work with G4S.” Asked if the company’s ability to provide security services has been effected by the recent swathe of political upheaval across Africa, Brooks is quick to say no. He says that, if anything, the situation creates opportunities for G4S to work closer with our customers and to better understand any impact politics may have on them. “Take Kenya for example,” he says. “During the elections there were periods when it wasn’t safe for people to be on the streets, a lot of businesses went into lockdown and similar examples come from the DRC and Zimbabwe. All that means is that during a period of political tension, we get close to our customers to ensure that we can ensure their safety
// THE NUMBER ONE MESSAGE IS THAT, FROM AN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE, WE’RE ABOUT PROFITABLE GROWTH ACROSS THE REGION // and the safety of our employees, while maintaining operations for them as best we can.” And as well as causing potential threats for clients, political change also presents opportunities. In Zimbabwe, for example, G4S is not currently active but with the new leadership promising change in the country, Brooks says that it will be closely watched as a potential area of interest. “It is now a possibility for the future should the economic and inward investment outlook become more positive,” he says. 2018 AND BEYOND Since our last look at G4S in Africa, business has continued to grow but not thanks to luck or fluke. Globally, the business continues to win major contracts (including major airport and contracts in Europe, Australia and Asia among others) because of its service delivery credentials. Locally, growth is very much the key word. “Our focus in 2018 will definitely be on growth,” reiterates Brooks. “That doesn’t only mean in new territories but also expanding in territories that we currently occupy and expanding our client base. I’m hugely enthused about the opportunities in Africa, I think the innovation that we offer our customers again presents an opportunity to grow but we have to grow profitably – that is really important for us. Regarding people, we will continue with the high levels of employee engagement and development. The number one message is that, from an African perspective,
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G4S AFRICA
PROVEN BENEFITS
Efficiency, safety, compliance and security
we’re about profitable growth across the region.” With traditional core services including manned guarding and cash solutions, and a culture of innovation and technology development, G4S in Africa stands a shining example of what is possible when sound strategies combine with a commitment to world-leading service delivery. “Any organisation of this size is a work in progress and there are always opportunities to improve and expand. Africa will undoubtedly become a very important market for all other regions and while it still has a long way to go, there’s always opportunity during times of development,” says Brooks. Even as the role of a security provider becomes more intangible, G4S is dedicated to providing services that are demanded by clients and in 2018, when cryptocurrencies and cybercrime are the new norm, Brooks says that the innovative nature of the business means that it will provide whatever is necessary. “We are focussed on our customer’s cash and so we maintain a close watch on what is happening with markets and technologies. Bitcoin, or any other technology of that type, requires us to keep an understanding of what could happen and what our role could be. Right now, we have no plans to outline a specific attention to that area but the world is changing and we will move our technologies and service accordingly.” This is a business that is delivering on its promise of ‘Securing Your World’. Brooks sums up by highlighting what seems to be the underlying theme for the business – its connection to customers delivered through people. “As a stronger, more focused business, I believe that we are better organised to serve our customers and to build even deeper relationships with them going forward,” he concludes.
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