This article originally appeared in the December 2021 issue of Security Business magazine. When sharing, don’t forget to mention Security Business magazine on LinkedIn and @SecBusinessMag on Twitter.
If you are anything like me, your inbox at the end of the year is chock-full of stuff – from hot takes on the trends coming next year to the mundane (more on this in a minute). Here are a few highlights of things that caught my eye recently:
The Good: Back to Brick-and-Mortar (hopefully)
With renewed fears of COVID variants notwithstanding, America seems to be returning to some degree of normalcy. According to the National Retail Federation, nearly 180 million Americans shopped during the five-day holiday shopping period from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday.
“In total, 179.8 million unique shoppers made in-store and online purchases during the holiday weekend, exceeding NRF’s initial expectations by over 21 million. The figure compares with 186.4 million shoppers in 2020 and is in line with the average of the last four years.”
A return to normal means a return to brick-and-mortar for many Americans: “Retailers saw an increase in foot traffic, with approximately 104.9 million shoppers visiting stores, up from 92.3 million in 2020,” NRF reported. “The overall number of online shoppers decreased to a total of 127.8 million from 145.4 million last year.”
Of course, this means a greater need for security and loss prevention and a potential rebirth of a vertical market that has been moving in the wrong direction with social distancing and stay-home mandates.
The Bad: “Best Wishes” Emails
I promise we all get these from the various vendors, associations and other partners that we work with. Not to be a total Scrooge or anything, but an email subject that says “Happy Thanksgiving from Company X” or “Holiday Greetings from Partner Y” is an email that is taking up space and time during an otherwise busy season at work. Believe me, I am happy it is Thanksgiving, but that email gets an insta-delete from me.
Time and inbox space are both valuable…but I understand a company’s need to send well wishes. How about instead of a simple “wishing you and yours a happy new year” message, you just send out a 5% discount coupon; or, if you don’t have a tangible incentive to offer, send out a profile of the latest and greatest HD camera or alarm panel in your inventory?
The happy holidays messaging is so much more welcome on my work computer when there’s something of value beyond the message. You can also avoid the one-note happy holiday emails by simply adding “happy holidays” or happy new year” to your email signature during the month of December.
The Ugly: Job Offers
Rest assured, your employees are getting unsolicited job openings via email and LinkedIn at an alarming rate. As Recruit Group’s Ryan Joseph writes in her Recruiting Roadmap column this month (page 24), poaching of technicians is becoming a serious issue in the security industry.
For me, I received an unsolicited offer via LinkedIn myself. In short, it read: Given your background, I thought it prudent to reach out [about open position X] [insert brief job description here]. Would you like to see the full job description?
Even people like me who are totally secure and happy with their current position would be curious to see the particulars when presented with the option. So I did. I opened the job posting and scanned the relevant details and quickly figured out it probably wasn’t for me, but something bugged me – there was no salary range on the listing. Quick tangent: Let’s be honest, this bugs the vast majority of potential job candidates out there. Why waste time applying for a job that could have a salary range easily in five or six figures in one direction or another? If you have been reading Security Business, you know that you need to do everything in your power to make a job more appealing. A salary range is one way to do it.
In any case, keep reading Recruiting Roadmap to make sure your employees are happy in their current positions when they receive unsolicited job openings.
Paul Rothman is Editor-in-Chief of Security Business magazine. Email him your comments and questions at [email protected]. Access the current issue, full archives and apply for a free subscription at www.securitybusinessmag.com.
