MGT8033 - Case study 7.1 Site Security and Secure Escorts SSSE - Tasked to Grow the Business and Improve Profitability - Management Case Study

Assignment Task

Assessment guidelines:

This assessment (case study analysis) has been set to test your competence in understanding and applying the significant concepts and material presented in this course. This purpose enables you to:
- apply critical thinking to evaluate, synthesize and critically review the material presented in the course
- relate the material to a context that is relevant and of interest to you
- support your career development by enhancing your competence in leading organizational change

More specifically, this assessment is aligned with the objectives of the course. These objectives are detailed within the course specifications. You can access the course specification on the USQ MGT8033 Study Desk. Each assessment item is based on a range of tasks that attempt to relate the material in both theoretical and practical terms.

Case Study Analysis:
You need to consider how you will identify the range of issues and problems in the following case

Case study 7.1 Site Security and Secure Escorts- SSSE:
Site Security and Secure Escorts (SSSE) is a company wholly owned by what will be referred to here as CP Security Services. The parent company is registered in the UK but provides a wide range of security services across Europe, including risk assessment and management, site security and secure escort services, cash transit (armored vehicles) and high-value courier services, detention centers and prison escorts, and technical security systems. SSSE is based in the Netherlands and provides manned guard and secure escort services across a range of sectors, including pharmaceuticals, financial services, telecommunications, defense, and utilities, to provide protection from theft, vandalism, industrial espionage, terrorism and attacks from radical activists motivated by issues such as animal rights. A new CEO was appointed to SSSE and tasked to grow the business and improve profitability. His first task was to familiarize himself with the current state of affairs and identify what could be done to improve the situation. He spent a lot of time out of his office meeting people. He had almost daily conversations with most managers at head office and, with his director of operations, visited clients and met SSSE staff working on clients’ premises. His aim, using conversations, observations, and management reports, was to identify key issues and begin to formulate an agenda for change. He did not embark on this process with a ‘clean sheet’. When he joined SSSE, he brought with him, based on his previous experience of managing similar businesses, his own subjective model of how organizations work and the key cause-and-effect relationships that determine effectiveness, and used this to direct his attention and interpret what he saw, heard and read about the organization. He quickly realized that a number of clients were unhappy with the quality of service provided by SSSE. This not only threatened to undermine his plan to grow the business and increase margins but also raised the possibility that SSSE would lose existing business as and when contracts came up for renewal. His initial diagnosis pointed to several factors that appeared to be contributing to this state of affairs:
- Staff shortages: Following 9/11 and the aggressive tactics employed by some animal rights activists, there had been a sharp increase in the demand for site security. This was accompanied by a related demand for new recruits to be more thoroughly vetted, a time- consuming process that reduced supply just when the demand for new staff was growing.
- Management style: The Company’s management style was top-down command and control. While this had been effective in the past when management could easily impose sanctions for poor performance, it was proving less effective in the tight labor market. There was evidence that it was having a negative impact on motivation, and some employees were paying less attention to performance standards and were ignoring operating procedures because they were confident, given the rising demand for staff, they would not be dismissed.
- Management structure: The number of supervisors had not increased in line with the number of new contracts, and so supervisors were overstretched. This was exacerbated by the fact that, in order to fulfill immediate contractual requirements for guards and escorts, supervisors had to stand in and personally cover for staff shortages.
- Ineffective management information systems: Decision making was highly centralized but inadequately supported by the quality of available management information. For example, managers located at headquarters did not have access to up-to-date information on operations, making it difficult for them to schedule work effectively.

The CEO shared and debated this assessment with senior colleagues. This debate produced some additional data and one minor reinterpretation and provided the basis for a searching discussion of what could be done to improve the situation. One suggestion was to explore ways of improving the performance of existing staff, but it was recognized that before this possibility could be pursued there was a need for more information. The operations director agreed to co-opt a site supervisor and conduct two focus groups with guards and escorts drawn from several sites. Their report indicated that while the guards and escorts raised different points specific to their roles, a number of common themes emerged. For example, both groups indicated that they often felt bored on the job, which lacked any meaningful challenge, and some remarks hinted that when not directly supervised, they read newspapers or did puzzles rather than give their full attention to their duties. They also felt undervalued. They realized there was a growing demand for personnel who had the level of security clearance required by SSSE’s clients, but they felt that this ‘scarcity factor’ was not reflected in their rates of pay. These findings prompted the management team to initiate a more detailed diagnosis of the roles people were required to perform, with a view to redesigning their jobs in ways that would improve their motivation and the quality of their work. A consultant was employed to facilitate this step in the process. He introduced managers to Hackman and Oldham’s (1980) job characteristics theory and helped them to use the job diagnostic survey to gather more information. 

Another suggestion for improvement was to take a detailed look at the way the organization was structured and the prevailing management style and to consider alternatives that might address some of the issues uncovered by the initial diagnosis. The consultant who had been brought in to help with the redesign of the jobs performed by guards and escorts was asked to facilitate a workshop on organization design. This led to the senior management team exploring the possible benefit of introducing team working on client sites, with self-managed teams being delegated responsibility for monitoring their own performance as well as executing the task. Hackman’s book Leading Teams (2002) guided much of this work.

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