G4. S: the inside story. G4. S’s Marcus Bloomfield in front of a 'Street to Suite' custody van in Boston, Lincolnshire. On an overcast Friday evening on a rundown suburban street in Boston, Lincolnshire, a part- time plumber and a retired policeman are sitting in a large white van outside a cell- block, waiting to hear from the police. In black bulletproof vests, smart black trousers and white shirts, they look like police officers. But their van is emblazoned with the words “G4. S – working with local policing” and the epaulettes on their uniforms carry the red, white and black logo of the private security company above that of Lincolnshire Police. Meet this year's inspiring leaders. Industry leaders offer a glimpse of their lives outside of the office--and how these experiences have helped to get them where they are today. Creative dialogue can reinvent your. The Inside Story; Studio album by Robben Ford; Released: May, 1979 (LP) Recorded: Cherokee Recording Studios, February 1979, United States: Genre: Jazz: Length: 43:32: Label: Elektra: Producer: Steve Cropper: Robben Ford. The Inside Story 963 Central Avenue Greenwood Nova Scotia Canada. B0P 1N0 Telephone: Canada 1-902-765-6116 : This is the frontline of part- privatised policing, where police officers still make the arrests but G4. S staff go to the scene, drive offenders away, and later process them for fingerprints and other paperwork in the company’s own “custody suites”. For G4. S, however, such potentially explosive deals with the public sector – in Britain and abroad – are a treasure- chest, which it wants to prise open further. That contradiction underlines the challenges facing an organisation of a scale and scope rarely seen in the private sector since the 1. East India Company ran its own army, ruled large parts of the British empire and implemented some of the most controversial government policies of the age. From “The Manor”, its modern black- and- white headquarters in Crawley in West Sussex, G4. S employs 6. 20,5. Nick Buckles during a decade of aggressive expansion. That vision is summed up in the company’s slogan “Securing Your World”. The bulk of its business involves supplying private guards for commercial and residential property, stewards for large events – from The Rolling Stones’ appearance this year in Hyde Park to the Indian Premier League cricket tournament – and armoured vans to carry cash from stores to banks and from banks to cash machines. Al Jazeera journalists and guests dissect and discuss the day’s top story. The Inside Story is a 1948 American comedy film directed by Allan Dwan and written by Mary Loos and Richard Sale. The film stars Marsha Hunt, William Lundigan, Charles Winninger, Gail Patrick, Gene Lockhart and Florence Bates. International An electrifying story of low-tech power Christine Horn & Raine Melissa Riman 19 October 2016 Affordable electronics are beginning to provide solar power to rural Malaysia where large-scale projects have failed. We often trust our instincts when it comes to decorating our living spaces. There are times however that the knowledge and experience of a professional can spare you unnecessary anxiety and expense. A design professional can. But G4. S armed guards also protect ships against piracy off Somalia, while its uniformed employees screen airline passengers in Vancouver, Canada, manage detention centres where immigrants are held before . The only employer to rival G4. S for . It is an apt parallel. Academics have pointed to the growth of G4. S and large rivals as evidence of the “Mc. Donaldisation” of private security – a reference to sociologist George Ritzer’s theory that many products and services are now supplied, like burgers in buns, by multinationals that put a premium on efficiency, standardisation, predictability and control. But G4. S’s control over its empire has slipped. Buckles stepped down in May, hit by the triple blows of a failed takeover of ISS, a Danish outsourcing group, an embarrassing failure to supply enough security guards for last year’s Olympics and a profit warning. The pressure on his successor – the more technocratic Ashley Almanza – remains intense. The government has prompted a criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into alleged overcharging by G4. S and rival Serco for electronic tagging of prisoners, some of whom had left the country, returned to prison or even died. In July, an inquest jury recorded a verdict of unlawful killing for an Angolan, Jimmy Mubenga, who died after being restrained by three G4. S security guards as he was being deported. A report into Oakwood prison, Staffordshire, run by G4. S since 2. 01. 2, revealed a serious drugs problem and shortages of clean clothing and basic toiletries (G4. S blamed “teething problems”). Abroad, former G4. S prison guards have claimed they oversaw forced . Work that puts staff in the line of fire is lucrative, and where Britain has led – fuelling the group’s growth over more than 2. National Audit Office estimates is worth . According to Almanza, fighting to convince investors he can sustain G4. S’s growth, its emerging markets business should continue to expand more strongly than its activities in the rest of the world. G4. S’s Clare Heyes checking CCTV feeds from cells at Boston Police Station. But G4. S’s ability to standardise and control such work only goes so far. As current and former executives concede, some of what G4. S and its large rivals do will always give rise to highly public, sometimes violent, confrontation. Strict controls on cost may push already low wages down, increasing pressure on staff. Governments could also lose their appetite for privatisation and outsourcing. If managed too loosely, the group’s riskier activities could threaten the reputation and future of G4. S as a whole, as its global presence could backfire. After years of expansion is G4. S now simply too big, too complex and too risky to manage? Three large companies, which together now employ nearly 1. One is ISS – the Danish service company that G4. S failed to buy two years ago. The others are the two global rivals in guarding, Securitas of Sweden and G4. S itself. Buckles was the architect of G4. S. He started at Securicor . His approach and appearance were not that of the typical leader of a blue- chip business. According to the head of one G4. S subsidiary based outside the UK, when he first glimpsed Buckles at a regional management meeting about three years ago, the chief executive was wearing light- coloured trousers and loafers; with his long hair and open- neck shirt, he “looked more like Elvis than a CEO”. In person he was – and remains – engaging. Another G4. S executive, based in Asia, says Buckles “had this ability to know you – he would always make sure that he spent time with all of his senior managers at any opportunity he could get”. As chief executive of Securicor, Buckles helped broker a 2. Group 4 Falck, a direct Danish descendant of Hogrefe’s Copenhagen Night Watch. The Danish group was larger than the British company but within a year, Buckles, then aged 4. Group 4 Securicor. Kean Marden, a London- based equity analyst with Jefferies, the investment bank, says: “Nick Buckles was good at planting flags on the map.” That is an understatement. Backed by a highly loyal and close- knit group of executives, Buckles aggressively pushed for rapid expansion. In the nine years to 2. The deal drive took G4. S into new territory and brought an extra. Until Almanza said he would rein in the deals, the group kept . His expansionist approach, however, did not go down well everywhere. It’s size not quality. If you look at the environment they are operating in, in second- , third- tier countries, risks are very high; the opportunities for unethical . They are extremely adept contract bidders and negotiators. They honed this skill during years competing for public- sector business, after Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government introduced competitive tendering and private construction and management of hospitals, transport links and prisons in the 1. The policy helped drive smaller companies from the field – or into the arms of bigger outsourcing companies, which were better equipped to take on the potential liabilities. But G4. S and its rivals are not entirely to blame for the way the market has evolved, though they have profited from it. The government failed to co- ordinate or share information about early contracts, and the UK Treasury under Gordon Brown – the natural regulator of such activity – pushed to outsource more. Tom Gash, who was a senior crime policy adviser in Blair’s strategy unit and is now director of research at the Institute for Government, a think- tank, says: “There’s a pernicious public sector contracting dynamic: what you have had historically is often highly politicised drives towards outsourcing, with a heavy focus on doing the deal quickly and delivering success, not . Then, in 2. 01. 1, having secured the Olympics job, Buckles’ ambition hit a wall. The deal would have doubled the group’s size and moved it firmly into cleaning and facilities management. But previously loyal investors forced him to withdraw the bid. Just eight months later, Buckles faced further embarrassment when a shortfall in trained security staff for the London Olympics obliged the UK to mobilise armed forces personnel to assist. In front of a parliamentary committee that was hostile even by the Roman circus standards of such hearings, Buckles – who admits now he went into the committee room exhausted and unprepared – agreed with members of parliament that the prestigious contract had turned into “a humiliating shambles”. Two senior executives resigned and, following a profit warning in May this year, Buckles himself finally stepped down with a . Almanza – who was brought into the group as chief financial officer and promoted within a month – looks like the anti- Buckles. Where Buckles’ public persona is marked by blokeish bonhomie and grand ambition, Almanza’s style is buttoned- up and austere, with occasional flashes of dry humour. Buckles is a football fan; Almanza is a keen follower of rugby union. In his pomp, Buckles was known for his collar- length hair; Almanza is bald. Yet, as the new chief executive is starting to discover, many of the challenges he faces are the same as those that ultimately did for his predecessor. He says the rationale was that it would help to raise standards and wages in the sectors that G4. S served. Local companies “aren’t going to do . So going into developing markets and establishing much stronger methods of security than they would otherwise get is a massive positive.” After that point, if managers came to him with the idea of exploring risky new areas, saying, “Don’t worry, we won’t brand it G4. S,” Buckles says he would respond, “In that case, don’t do it.”Buckles apologising to MPs for the 2. Olympics 'shambles' when the company failed to supply enough security staff. The brand values include “the G4. S Way” – common standards and practices including “service excellence” and ethics, reputation and crisis management. The GMB union, which represents 2. G4. S workers in the UK, compares the group favourably with other employers in the still- fragmented security sector.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2016
Categories |