New Zealand Security Association (NZSA)

and revenues. The key areas we focus on are: advocacy – determining government policy that impacts our industry, particularly from licencing; ensuring our industry training is fit for purpose for the employers and employees; and lifting standards – be it through guidelines or good practice documents, there is a focus on continuous improvement and operating to best practice standards. “The other area that has become more important recently for us is finding good workers for our members. There is a labour shortage in New Zealand at the moment, and COVID-19 has had an effect on the workforce as well. Traditionally, we’ve had immigrants coming into the country to fill some security roles; with that tightening up, our members have found it difficult to recruit good people. So we work actively with schools – educating students on security career options. We also act as an employment agent with MSD (Ministry of Social Development), which is New Zealand’s government agency that looks to take people off the benefit and put them into employment.” BVO: What are the biggest challenges for the industry? Morrison: “One of the challenges for us is defining who we represent. When you talk about security, people have a different mindset or view as to what we’re talking about. For a lot of people it brings to mind a picture of a security guard outside a bank or at a mall. And part of the challenge for us is educating people that security is far wider than that – we get involved in cyber security; a lot of our members are involved in electronic security – providing alarms, access control, CCTV, etc. By definition, we cover our members who fall within New Zealand licencing. We don’t traditionally cover those who manufacture equipment, but we do for those who install equipment. We also cover those who supply personnel providing personal security services, like security officers. “We’ve started going into the schools and talking to young people who are near the age of graduating about what careers are available in the industry. As part of that we’ve just launched a virtual reality training platform that is specific to security officers. But it also shows the kids that we’ve got new learning tools and it catches their interest. In conjunction with that we’ve developed a new Security Career Pathways website, which provides a pictorial pathway through some of the career opportunities that exist. It includes information on what training is required, what the school levels are, what the pay levels are, etc. So that’s providing a very good tool for educating people as well.” BVO: How do you communicate with your membership? Morrison: “We have an annual awards event rather than a conference. A lot of New Zealanders will go across to Australia or to the U.S. and attend their large conferences. So we felt it was better to support and promote some of those overseas conferences rather than trying to do our own and not getting particularly good representation. We do have a bi-monthly electronic newsletter, which provides a fairly significant update to our membership as to what’s happening in the industry. During the height of the pandemic, we had communications going out almost daily in some stages – updating on government policy and the implications on our members. Feedback showed that they found it a good conduit for providing information and very valuable. So we really focused on that relevancy of information and looking at what’s going on in the conferences that happened in the last year. It’s been the best source for our NEW ZEALAND SECUR I TY ASSOC I AT ION (NZSA)