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GLOBAL SUPPORT SERVICES TURNS 8 YEARS OLD!

Ok, so if that was dog years, we’d be celebrating our golden anniversary now. Alas, it is good old human years, but we still think it’s an achievement.

Our eight-year journey has been challenging – to say the least – at times but ultimately immensely rewarding, peppered with plenty of opportunities to excel and as many to trip us up.  Our client relationships, built on trust and a passion to deliver, have allowed us to weather the storms when they’ve hit and provided great motivation to keep going when times were tough. In the early years, each single day could perfectly capture the life in an SME… ecstatic highs, depressing lows and then a dog takes a poo in the office in front of a client. Worse still, once, I can’t say that in a newsletter… I’m sorry.

With the ongoing misfortune at Carillion, our minds have turned to thinking about the importance of financial stability. Having had a clear business plan and never deviating from our core operating values in achieving growth, we’ve seen the benefits as many around us have disappeared.

Lack of financial planning is often the undoing of many a great company, big and small.  The security industry is renowned as being one which is in a race to the bottom – those who can charge the least often experience the quickest growth. But the fact is, and we’ve all seen it, that this leads to one of two consequences: affecting staff wages, the other the company’s financial stability.

We took two bold steps at our inception; to become one of the first 100 Living Wage Foundation members and not to undercharge for the services we provided.

These values were most tested back in 2015 when a large FM company took over a contract – our largest at the time – where we provided canine services. I was called into their offices and told to reduce our costs by 30% or we’d lose the contract to cheaper providers.  I spent days trying to explain to my team that we would lose money and that no provider could provide the same level of service and reliability for the money they wanted to pay (simply to add to their own bottom line it turned out). We held firm and we lost.

Two years later, the FM company had the canine services taken away from their contract and back it came to us. Indeed, the FM company lost the whole contract in the end.  They simply couldn’t deliver on their promises whilst being the cheapest.  It’s an equation that obviously can’t work but until all parties accept this, the Carillion calamity will be a reoccurring theme.

We owe a huge amount of gratitude to all of the people – both staff and clients (past and present) – who at various points in the last eight years have put their time, effort and heart into ensuring GSS provides a reliable and professional service to its clients and great employment experience to its staff. Thank you.

The world has changed a lot in the last eight years and looking forward, it is quite difficult to perfectly predict the ways in which the threats to our clients will. Our aspiration is that we can continue to be the stable, reliable and trusted partner through it all.

We hope you’ll all continue to join us for the journey…

Article written by Daniel Mailly MD