Security officer or safety officer - what are the differences between the two?  What exactly do they do?  In some instance, security as well as safety matters are taken care off by the same people or groups of people.  So does it make a difference what we call them?  I believe it does.

Having attended many annual Leo Forums, Camps or Youth Conventions / Trips since 1997, I realize one obvious issue that is faced by overnight events organized by the youth (or teenagers for some) for the youth / teenagers.  The major concerns of organizers, teachers, parents and advisors are often revolving around the safety of the children.

Youth of today, as many would argue, is more vocal and rebellious compared to those of Generation X or Baby-Boomers.  Thus, when organizing such overnight events, it is inevitable that the organizing committee will appoint a person to be responsible for the participants’ safety (often known as the security officer/team).  This team is often made up of youth themselves (since they are the organizers) to be monitoring and possible dangers or breach of discipline.

What I’d like to argue here is the fundamental flaw of such a control system.  Firstly, to name an individual or a committee “security officer” or “head of security” is indirectly giving a job description that says “become the law enforcer”.  So psychologically what does a law enforcer do?  Law enforcer are often “seen” to be “the powerful one”.  What we’re subconciously doing is to give the youth (or even teenagers) the power they were not even ready for.  It’s not uncommon for us to see some of them mis-using the powers and act in a way as if they MUST be respected rather than working to earn the respect.

Furthermore, Generation Y is the generation that is “trained to win”.  They are often told that the winning mindset is important at all times.  Subconsciously, that also means “beating the security system to prove that they won”!  Especially for teenagers, there’s often the thrill of beating the system without getting caught.  Also, since the security officer is seen as a law enforcer, it’s not surprising that most participants dislike the security team.

Based on discussions in the previous 2 paragraphs, there are 2 likely outcome:

• Nobody wants to be security officer because everyone would eventually dislike him / her.
• Those who are extremely eager to be security officer or eager to make their friends security officer; but reality is that they have plans to mis-use that power.

Neither of these are outcome that we wanted to achieve, right?

Now let’s get back to the original objective of having a sub-committee to take care of security - It’s for the safety of all participants.  If that’s the case, why not call them safety committee or safety officers?  That’s when we position the committee / person to take care of safety related issues (without the psychological “powers” given to the security officer).  And how would a safety officer ensures participant’s safety?

• Advise participants instead of enforcing laws.
• Since there isn’t too much perceived powers, there isn’t the “I’m above you” mentality.
• Since there isn’t too much perceived powers, there wouldn’t be that much resistance from the participants.
• Since there isn’t perceived powers to rebel against, there’s no “winning” for participants in endangering themselves (or in that case, breaking any rules).
• Since power-distance is going to be low, the safety committee would be friends with the participants.  And we usually do not give our friends a hard time, right?

So let’s see what’s the “unwritten job description” for the different designation:

• Security Officer: Take care of security and rules within the function (ensure that participants do not break rules).  If any rules are broken, you’re responsible.
• Safety Officer: Take care of participants (ensure that participants are secured).  If any participants’ safety are compromised, you’re responsible.

So why should we be focusing our energy taking care of security and rules instead of the participants?  Food for thought.

I guess this doesn’t only apply to youth functions.  Any companies are ought to think deeper about the kind of designations given to the employees as well.

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Tags: designation, discipline, events, leo, position, power, safety, Security, titles, youth

This entry was posted by Clayton J.C Tan on Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Culture, Generation Y, Leadership & Management, Youth Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.