The Union of Security Employees (USE) has renewed its call for buyers and providers of private security services to move towards outcome-based contracting (OBC) and job redesign.
The union also made fresh calls to increase awareness of security officers (SOs) being abused and encourage those on contract for service to switch to contract of service arrangements to receive better protection.
These calls come on the back of the latest survey by the union and the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS).
Results were unveiled by SUSS Senior Lecturer Dr Tania Nagpaul at a media briefing on 22 December 2022 at Alex Residences, a private condominium.
The survey was conducted with over 1,000 SOs between April and July 2022.
It is the fourth wave of a longitudinal study conducted by the union and the university to gain insights into the challenges SOs face and find ways to enhance their wages, welfare and work prospects.
The first, second and third waves of the survey were conducted between January 2020 to September 2021.
The event also included a viewing of the CCTV and video analytics technologies employed at the condominium to improve the efficiency and productivity of the officers at the site.
Work Prospects
In terms of work prospects, the key finding is that technology adoption is high among officers.
The majority (93 per cent) of SOs used technology at work. Close to 60 per cent reported that technology made their work easier.
The top five technologies implemented at work sites were CCTVs (85.8 per cent), followed by wearable technology (61.5 per cent), visitor management systems (56.8 per cent), mobile patrol app (39.2 per cent) and video analytics (35 per cent).
Currently, security services are procured by Management Corporation Strata Titles (MCSTs) or property managing agents using two separate budgets for manpower and technology.
At the event, USE Executive Secretary Steve Tan said that with technology usage becoming more pervasive and officers more willing to upskill, the way forward is for MCSTs to buy manpower and technology services together under one combined budget.
He added that this could be the catalyst for jobs to be transformed and redesigned to improve the work prospects of SOs.
He shared: “We think there is a lot of good opportunities for job transformation at the sites. For it to happen, we need enlightened buyers represented by the MCST and managing agents.
“We need enlightened security agencies who are prepared to move away from the comfortable level they are at to working with really good technology companies to be able to provide technology that works.
“We need to be able to convince our [security service] buyers out there that this is the way.”
One SO who has reaped the benefits of using improved technology is Sivan Manokaran.
The 44-year-old security supervisor has been in the industry for about 10 years and has worked at Alex Residences for about two years.
Having acquired new capabilities in using the technologies at his site, he will receive a salary increase of 17 per cent come January 2023. This is higher than industry average of 11 to 14 per cent.
It also takes place one year ahead of the revised Progressive Wage Model (PWM) requirements of gross pay with overtime that will come into effect in 2024.
Wages
Regarding wages, the survey revealed that SOs were earning close to the requirements of the industry’s PWM.
However, about one-third of their gross wages came from overtime work.
Currently, an officer’s regular working hours are eight hours per day, six days per week. However, many officers tend to clock 12 hours a day, with four hours of overtime per day.
If they do so for six days consecutively, overtime makes up 24 hours per week. This brings their total working hours to 72 per week.
With OBC, the shift towards focusing on outcomes or set targets rather than headcounts could reduce the need for officers to do overtime work.
“Instead of being manpower-centric, we first put the machine to work 24/7. The human operates the machine, and therefore he can possibly work an eight-hour shift in the future,” explained Mr Tan.
The union also urged service buyers and agencies to consider working with the newly set-up Security Tripartite Alliance for Responsible Outcome-Based Contracting (STAR) to tap on resources and funding support to transform security contracts.
USE General Secretary Raymond Chin said: “It is more important now than ever to focus our efforts on much-needed transformation of officers’ jobs and the security industry at large.
“Together with STAR, USE stands ready to push this key initiative further because every security officer matters.”
Mr Tan added that OBC, coupled with higher technology implementation, would make working in security more attractive as a career choice.
He elaborated: “There is a need to lower working hours. One of the reasons that the industry has always faced a shortage of manpower is that the younger workforce generally does not want to come into the industry because of the long working hours.
“If we are able to leverage technology to transform the jobs, instead of being a security officer, [they could be] a security tech ‘automator’. I think [this] would change quite a bit of the attractiveness of the job nature.”
Other key findings include high job security among officers. Nearly 80 per cent believe that they will keep their jobs.
But satisfaction levels towards chances of salary increases have dipped from 60.9 per cent in the second wave to the current 55.5 per cent.
Satisfaction levels towards chances of being promoted have also fallen, from 55.5 per cent in the third wave to the current 47 per cent.
Welfare
The main findings surrounding welfare were on the high rates of officer abuse.
About 41 per cent of officers reported experiencing some form of abuse.
Older officers were often the target, with those aged 51 to 70 forming nearly 62 per cent of all victims.
Male officers were also more likely to be abused – 78.8 per cent versus 21.2 per cent of female officers.
The perpetrators were also likely to be members of the public and visitors, which made up 64 per cent of the abuser profile.
In response, Mr Tan called for the need to increase the awareness of officer abuse and for the numbers to be tracked annually.
“By default, four officers out of 10 go to work expecting to be abused. We don’t think that one or two days per week, I’ll actually get scolded by the general public, so why should our officers have the short end of the stick?” he reasoned.
The survey also showed that a high majority of 98 per cent of officers had at least one day off per week, with most being able to take a day off without any issues.
However, the survey uncovered that about one-fifth of officers were on contract for service work arrangements. This means that they worked on an ad-hoc basis and do not enjoy the benefits of a full-time or contract of service working arrangements such as leave.
The union would like to encourage these officers to consider being on a contract of service arrangement in order to have more protection in the long run.
Mr Tan explained: “The key point we are trying to make is that there are a group of people who are negotiating freelance contracts because you can get paid immediately… [but] in the longer term, the worker may lose out.
“Contract of service provides more protection to officers … It is something that is governed by the Employment Act, governed by what the trade unions can do.”
