Another month has passed in the blink of an eye and what an exciting and busy month April has been, with lockdown restrictions easing within the UK we were back to some form of normality.

Our bid teams have been across the country this month working on presentations and mobilisations of 18 new sites.

You may have seen in last month’s news we have mentioned the purchase of our new office within Highlands Court and this month the renovations for this were in full swing; this journey is going to be fully documented via our social media accounts so keep your eyes peeled for the latest updates.

Our People & Communications Director Laura went on maternity leave as you will have seen in the March News and we are pleased to announce the safe arrival of Baby Boy Liam, congratulations Laura & Family on your new addition! 

Over the past 12 months our Keyholding department has gone from strength to strength and to thank our Keyholding Manager Stuart Park for his continuous dedication and hard work this month, we awarded Stuart a special recognition award. 

Our Head Office continues to grow as this month we welcomed Tom our new addition to our Vetting Department, and welcomed back Emily our HR Administrator after 9 months maternity leave. 

MAN Commercial’s Head Office training room finally got some use following COVID-19 social distancing guidelines, as we held RSAS training, using training providers STM for our clients TFWM. 

We announced last month we would be taking part in the BSIA & ACS Pacesetter awards again this year, we are delighted to announce we were awarded regional winners for the BSIA Security personnel awards and have been shortlisted for the ACS Pacesetters award, with the results for this being announced in the next coming weeks.

As lockdown continues to ease throughout the UK we are anticipating a busy events season ahead of us with confirmation of events taking place later on in the year, post lockdown and we are all very excited for a busy summer! 

February has bought us lots of very exciting new opportunities here at MAN Commercial, including the acquisition of a second office building! As many know, we are based in Solihull in the West Midlands, which is a fantastic location for our Head Office, allowing easy travel to our sites and clients across the UK. With our continued growth and big plans for continued future expansion, we are delighted to reveal we are in the process of purchasing a second office space at Highlands Court, a stone’s throw from our current premises.

We are very much looking forward to kitting the place out MAN Commercial style and moving some of the team across later this year. As security industry key workers, it is essential that many of our Head Office staff continue to be office based throughout the pandemic, and the new space will assist us with ensuring we have a safe, socially distanced space for all.

With growing our base and brand a big focus for us in 2021, we have been working on some special MAN Commercial merchandise that you may have seen pop up on our social media; we have launched hoodies, water bottles and stationary, with more coming soon!

We also have high hopes that Summer 2021 will bring the return of our busy events season – we have already been inundated with enquiries since the Government announcement on the 22nd, so exciting times are ahead!

We have also been busy recruiting this month to expand our keyholding team. Due to more contract wins in this sector, expanding the team will ensure we have 24 hour, 7 days a week dedicated support for our key and alarm response customers.

Recruitment has also been happening in our Finance Team, where we have placed one of our Vetting Officers on a part-time secondment supporting the department; this opportunity has come up thanks to our continued turnover growth increasing the workload.

We have been investing in our officers this month, with IOSH Working Safely training being made available for those who will be working on exciting construction projects we have lined up this year with an existing high-profile distribution client.

As always, mobilisations have been underway for new contracts – we have been busy getting ready for the launch of a new central London concierge assignment, as well as undertaking more work for existing clients in fashion distribution and NHS supply chain. New sites have also gone live in Hinkley and Birmingham. Additionally, we have been hard at work planning and preparing for an exciting upcoming London retail opportunity!

We hit our 27^th year of trading in March, time flies when you’re having fun! We’ve been updating and making more improvements to our head office again by redecorating 1 of our walls in the main office.

Our events team were out at the Cheltenham Festival from 10^th – 13^th March. We have also done and won some presentations in March which work will begin for later this year.

On March 18^th, we held a ‘Women In Security’ brunch at Head Office to celebrate International Womens Day on 8^th March. We drew 3 of our female security officers at random and delivered a big bouquet of flowers to their site. We asked our female security officrs if they would like to say anything about being a women in security and here are a few of our responses:

Fiona Griffiths, UK NSI ‘Being a female security officer, a few years ago there was a stigma attached being in a male dominated profession. I remember going for a job many years ago in a nightclub and was told they did not want women. I can only assume they felt females were not aggressive enough, (little do they know!) Being in security does harden you as a person as you have to work a lot harder, stand your ground and not be seen as weak.

We do the profession because we can do it. We’re a lot less of a threat and choose empathy over conflict. I would like to think that we have changed people’s attitudes on how female officers work but there’s still not enough of us!’

Michelle Sheils, Sunseeker International ‘I have been a security officer for 25 years now. I started off my career as a security guard, then quickly got promoted to a supervisor. A couple of years after this I was promoted again to a senior site supervisor. Originally I had a team of 10 security guards, 2 of which were female guards.. This over the years increase to 40 officers.

I am very proud of my achievements and goals in my career as a security guard. I helped my position for 18 years until I moved to Poole Dorset. I am a security guard for Man Commercial, I continue to be proud of my work in a man world’s as they say. I am the only woman here in our small team. I am very well respected, and do my job to best of my ability. Security work is very long hours, my children were small when I first started my career. It would be nice to see more women in security. More girl power is very much needed’

Rebecca Eastman, Control Room Head Office ‘I love that Man Commercial are recognising women in security. When I first joined Man back in 2012 I was only 1 of a few females. I have never been treated differently because I am a female, and MAN’s expectations of me have been the same as my male counterparts and now clients are realising that females are an asset to their companies security and embrace it. Even though I no longer work on sites but in the control room, I feel that I still make a contribution to the female workforce in security.’

These are challenging times we are all facing currently with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. MAN Commercial are classed as key workers providing our security services across many crucial sectors and our Head Office remains open 24/7. We have been extremely busy supporting our officers and clients and will continue to do so. Key workers like Security Officers are essential personnel, without whom the public could be at risk. MAN Commercial are extremely proud to be offering our services unwaveringly in the face of adversity, and are so grateful to every colleague who is helping make this happen.