While working full-time before transferring to UIUC, one of the jobs that I held for about two years was as a security officer at an outdoor mall just outside of Chicago, Old Orchard Mall. My older brother was working as supervisor at the time and was able to get me the job. This type of job attracted a unique array of people which created an interesting dynamic within the workplace. There were full-time students like me and my brother,who were working to pay off some of their classes. There were others who were trying to eventually become police officers who were trying to get some sort of experience. And others who have been working there for years, but have not moved up too far within the company. This combination of different lifestyles did create a an interesting work dynamic.
There was also a lot of conflict because of this and a high turnover rate among the security officers. Another big problem that contributed to many conflicts was the way the security company's upper management was set up, there was little accountability of the supervisors, which gave them a lot more responsibility than they were trained for. When I worked there, there were 3 supervisors, one for each day shift. And for our specific mall we had only an assistant director in charge of security, because the main director was a regional manager and rarely spent time at our mall. Most of the conflicts in the workplace revolved around the inefficiency of this management set up.
A common conflict that occurred multiple times is that the supervisors would play favorites heavily. When ever we would have a call or a situation, the supervisors would always take only specific officers with them and they would be taught about how to handle it. And these specific officers would get a lot of face time with the mall owners and actually learn about how to handle situations. When the officers who weren't favored finally got an opportunity to go to calls, they would not know what to do because of their lack of experience. This was a downward spiral that many officers suffered and was a cause for the high turnover rate.
I think that because of how the structure of supervisors and officers was organized and the nature of the work, these kinds of conflicts were inevitable. Because we were dealing with sometimes dangerous and emergency situation, it was hard to properly train all officers without actually having them to experience them firsthand. Because of this there was a big gap in knowledge between the favored and un-favored officers. But I do think that if the supervisors were a little bit more aware of this problem, many people would have stayed at Old Orchard Mall and there would have been a lot smaller turnover rate.
I can understand that if a supervisor has confidence in a particular officer then wanting to use that person in a tense situation. You called it playing favorites but it could also be just going with a sure thing. Given that, here's how I wish you expanded the story?
ReplyDeleteWere any of those officers who were called in the tense situations the ones who turned over? Or were there a small core of personnel who persisted as long timers and the rest were there only for a short while? I gather from what you said about the makeup of the personnel that the very long timers were probably not the most productive, so you can repeat the above question asking about whether there was a difference in treatment between the college students and the police officer wannabes.
The last question I'd ask, probably this one you can't answer, is whether senior management really cared about this. In other words, was the bulk of the job simply to be there as a deterrent, and the occasional problem taken as an expected loss in advance. If theft or vandalism wasn't a big deal issue for the owners of the stores in the mall, why should the security job be well managed? Would it have mattered much to the stores bottom line if it were?
I was sure I responded to this comment when the blog was first posted, but must have not published it correctly.
ReplyDeleteIn response to whether or not senior management cared about the mall level security organization, it was definitley not given top priority. Because a majority of the stores in the mall had their own personal security (with a lot more authority than us), we were not there to officially stop any sort of theft. Our authority was limited to strictly observe and report and would reprimanded if we got more involved than that. Of course publicly senior management preached the importance of security and safety, but in reality the training and organization of security officers on the mall level was severely overlooked.
This was probably the main cause of the power vaccum among middle management, where supervisors and a small core of officers were able to have almost complete control over who stayed and who went.