Helios is a partner in a project called BEMOSA (Behaviour Modelling for Security in Airports), a European-wide research project aimed at improving security in airports through enhancing the capability of airport authority personnel to correctly detect potential security hazards and reduce false alarms.

As a part of our work we recently interviewed airport security managers and their staff at airports all over Europe. Of course, every airport is different. Sometimes security staff are employed directly; sometimes security is provided through a contract with a services company (or by the local police) and there are many local issues. Common themes, however, emerge when comparing the interview transcripts from the research sites. One of the most pressing security issues today is the high turnover of security staff. At some airports staff only stay in position for a few months before leaving to take other jobs. This increases training costs for airports but it also has more important consequences:  a higher percentage of inexperienced personnel amongst the security staff means a more fragile system. So we looked closer at the reasons why these experts leave their jobs so soon. Surprisingly perhaps, although money is an important factor, it is certainly not the most important. Some security staff we interviewed were considering much lower paid jobs in aviation or in other fields.

So why the high levels of dissatisfaction? The number one reason is simple and we heard it over and over again: security staff feel that their managers are not willing to listen to them. They say that too much attention is given to fulfilling the regulations rather than to working with people. Security regulations are extremely important, there is no doubt about that, but few problems in history have been solved only by stronger regulation. Every airport is different and who has better information about possible gaps in the system at their particular airport than the people who are actually responsible for security tasks? In the course of our interviews, these people expressed simple but very efficient ideas on how to make the system less fragile.

It became clear to the interview team that improving communication between airport managers and their staff would bring significant benefits to airport security. In this context security is probably no different to other highly unionised sectors. Sometimes it is simply a matter of listening more and acknowledging people’s views. Yes, sometimes managers can have very good reasons for implementing certain measures and dismissing staff members' ideas, but the key point is that these reasons should be well communicated so that everybody feels on board. As we all know, security is not only about the procedures; staff attitude can be sometimes even more important.

Some airports are great at communicating with their staff and there is nothing new in this short blog for those managers. Yet, it doesn't hurt to remember once in a while that while airport security procedures are important, the most important element in this system is people.

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Juraj Jirků
Consultant
Tel: +44 1252 451 669
Mobile: +421 905 477 081

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