Top Qualities Of An Honest Watchman

The 24th July – we celebrate International Security Officer Day, and pause to recognize the important and infrequently unsung role Security Officers play keep our communities safe. We’ve taken this chance to ponder the question of what makes a decent watchman.

At Internal Security, we are very clear on what makes an honest security guard; we live and breathe the pursuit of security excellence. But recently we thought it would be worthwhile to know what others are saying on the topic.

To this end, we asked the net “what are the qualities that an honest guard should possess? We conducted a Google search of the phrase ‘best security guard’. It produced about many results.

From the various lists published online, we compiled an inventory of the foremost mentioned good watcher qualities. And quite frankly, a number of the results left us a bit stunned!

And the results are…

From most to least mentions, the qualities that featured most prominently among these lists were (with the amount of mentions in brackets):

Physical fitness/strength (10)

Alertness/vigilance/mind on the task (10)

Communication skills (10)

Honesty/integrity (8)

Judgement (6) Leading and teamwork (5)

Attitude/motivation (5)

Training (5)

Punctuality/Preparedness (3)

Customer service (2)

Values/respects life (2)

Experience (1)

Low profile (1)

Professionalism (1)

We’ve spent over 12 years that specialize in recruiting Security Officers with ‘the right stuff’ and developing them to be the most effective they will be.

Knowing what we now – so seeing the answers our internet search threw up – leads us to the conclusion that (i) the net certainly doesn’t have all the answers, and (ii) security providers like us have a job to play in providing greater awareness of what characteristics good security guards possess.

In particular, we were surprised that ‘Physical fitness/strength’ featured all told 10 lists that we surveyed, ranking above ‘honesty/integrity’, ‘leading and teamwork’, ‘customer service’ and lots of other qualities. Sure, fitness and strength play a task, but the role of today’s Security Officer is predominantly in surveillance and conflict de-escalation, and these require a more complex set of attributes.

‘Judgment’, or having the ability to reason and to exercise good judgment, was mentioned by only six out of the ten lists we surveyed. we expect that’s a bit strange. Exercising good judgment – including the flexibility to de-escalate a situation – may be a key quality that a security officer must put into practice regularly, and thus it should be further up the list.

‘Training’ (5) and ‘experience’ (1) ranked poorly relative to several of the opposite qualities, yet these are things our customers tell us that they have – well trained and experienced security officers. Perhaps many of the lists saw training and knowledge as enablers of excellent guard qualities instead of as qualities in themselves.

‘Punctuality/preparedness’ (3) had us stunned! Surely, turning up for duty on time and well prepared could be a basic quality of a decent security officer. Reliability could be a foundation requirement for providing security.

Lastly, we felt ‘Customer service’ (2) and professionalism (1) were way too low down within the list. Understanding client’s needs and delivering to them is integral to providing excellcent security.

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