How Not To Be Mistaken In The Reliability Of Protection

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Each head of an enterprise or firm, when hiring employees, is primarily concerned with the problem of how to select reliable and competent people. Therefore, already at the stage of recruiting for the company, protective measures are taken, such as checking the reliability and professionalism of personnel. This important issue requires the most serious and constant attention, especially in the system associated with the militarized security of objects, i.e. where the employees are entrusted with weapons, where the lives of other people depend on their skills.

At many security companies, the personnel service and the security service of the enterprise are involved in the recruitment process. And more and more often, for a comprehensive check of the reliability and competence of a candidate, firms turn to the services of psychologists.

A practical psychologist of the enterprise checks not only job candidates, but also working employees, thus, realizing the psychological safety of the staffing of the enterprise, which includes the work:

• with candidates and newly hired employees;

• with the personnel of the enterprise;

• with the personnel reserve of the enterprise;

• with leaving employees;

• to identify negative trends among personnel, social and psychological climate, etc.

First of all, persons applying for a job in a company that arouse suspicions for any reason are subject to verification. traits like honesty, decency, loyalty to the company, and in the security business, to identify professional suitability (stress resistance, readiness for emergency actions, etc.). Obviously, it is desirable to supplement such techniques with special methods of psychological examination of the personality. And it is a practicing psychologist who should carry out repeated psychodiagnostic work using a bank of professional techniques that complement each other. Of these, the basic is the method of observing a person using the simplest psychological techniques and skills:

• look into the eyes of the interlocutor during a conversation;

• listen attentively and with interest;

• ask open-ended questions;

• show self-confidence;

• be sympathetic to the interlocutor.

These techniques provide additional information about a person.

Psychologists-diagnosticians at the present stage are alarmed by the extensive use of test methods by non-professionals, and a large number of books on the market, such as "Popular Psychological Tests", creating the illusion of simplicity and accessibility of this knowledge, only significantly reduce the reliability of the results obtained ("blur" the result). Sometimes the purity of execution and interpretation of even the most valid and tested tests is not traced, in this case the professional observation of the psychologist, his ability to evaluate non-verbal means of communication, which are an integral part of psychodiagnostic examination, helps. Gestures and facial expressions involuntarily betray a lie. More 3. Freud said: “He who has eyes, let him see, he who has ears, let him hear and make sure that there is no such secret that a mere mortal could hide. His lips are closed, but he splutters with his fingertips. From all the pores, recognition breaks out. Therefore, the task is to see the most intimate and unravel it."

Studying a person's personality, a practicing psychologist uses various methods aimed at solving specific problems:

• Observation - provides information about what a person is socially; how others see him, which he himself does not know;

• Interview - reveals how a person understands and assesses the upcoming activity, his work, certain events in life;

• Psychological testing - diagnoses human behavior in his future activities;

• Study of the results of activity - shows what a person is able to do, what he is capable of, how he relates to the matter;

• Study of personal data, special. checks, expert polls and so on - allow you to check the reliability of the information provided by a person.

For the practice of working with the surveyed employees, not only the qualities of a person, reflected in individual scales of any test, are important, but also the norms of professional selection: what is considered acceptable and what is not. At the same time, there is a need to focus not on average criteria, but on specific, special, optimal for each organization, which are determined empirically.

For professionals, there is no need to justify that security activities should be classified as activities in special conditions. To select applicants for work in security structures, knowledge is needed: what personal, professionally important qualities a candidate should have, that is, the correspondence of the psyche of a particular person to the specifics of the job. The so-called "golden mean" is often characterized by impersonality, so there is a need to focus on the average criteria of the norm, taking into account the specifics of activities at a particular facility. Such boundaries are determined by a simple comparison of the test results of 20-30 "best", "average" and "worst" employees, which clearly show the obvious differences and should be taken into account when selecting candidates.

The basic, structural basis for the success of a security officer (SSO) is the indicators of emotional stability, self-control, insight, responsibility, motivational and mental readiness for an extreme situation.

The technology used by us for the psychological study of candidates for service in the security business has been tested for many years in private firms in Volgograd and has proven itself not only in the selection of candidates applying for work, but also in the selection of employees for promotion, training, and in working with the staff. in a psychologically competent arrangement of employees. The used test methods 16 PF R. Cattell (187), G. Eysenck (form A), "Hand-test" are widely known to practicing psychologists and hardly need a detailed description. They allowed us to derive the criteria for the professional suitability of a security officer. Separately, it can be emphasized that in addition to the tests, an arbitrary conversation, a specially developed questionnaire and observation are used.

Recommended criteria are presented in the table.

Requirement

Justification

Recommended psychological norms

The security officer must be moderately sociable, moderately closed, that is, have an average measure of communication

A security officer should not be very sociable: such, most likely, does not listen or hear another person; but he should not be uncommunicative: such, usually, strains colleagues and clients with his non-contact, withdrawal and seriousness

According to R. Cattell's test, subjects with a high degree of communication according to factor A (above 9 stacks) and pronounced isolation, fenced off (less than 5 walls) are unsuitable in the security service

The security officer must be emotionally stressed, worried about the result of his activities

The security officer should not be characterized by high emotional stability, because he is insensitive to people, events, information preceding the "emergency"; but an emotionally unstable employee can also be dangerous, because prone to excessive anxiety and alarmism

According to G. Eysenck's test, subjects with high emotional instability (above 14 - 15 walls) and pronounced introversion (less than 6-7 walls) are unsuitable in the security service;

according to the Cattell test for factor C (emotional stability) not less than 6 walls and not more than 8; and the O3 factor of at least 6 walls.

The security officer must meet the average standards of the age and professional group of intellectual development

A security officer with a low intellectual level is unsuitable, since he will not be able to adequately assess the non-standard situation; and an employee with high intellectual potential will be burdened by the routine performance of daily duties, which in turn may lead to a violation of official instructions

According to R. Cattell's test, subjects with high intelligence for factor B (above 8 walls) and low intellectual abilities (less than 4 walls) are unsuitable in the security service

The security officer must be moderately conflicted and moderately aggressive, that is, capable, understanding the norms of behavior in a particular group, without violating them, nevertheless maintain his independence as a person, and be able to act boldly and actively in non-standard situations

An employee prone to conflict and aggressive behavior, the manifestation of inadequate reactions, has internal prerequisites for "rejection" in the team

To identify these qualities, special attention should be paid to the pronounced values according to the Hand-test method, where the aggressiveness indicator should not be lower than 1 and above 2 units and according to the R. Cattell test, such factors as:

• E (power "I") - not lower than 5 walls;

• factor E (dominance) - not less than 5 walls, but not more than 8;

• factor H (courage, courage) - not lower than 6 walls;

• Factor F (impulsivity) -6 - 10 walls;

• Factor N (discernment) - at least 5-6 walls;

In addition to the proposed criteria for the R. Cattell test, a joint assessment of the following factors can be attributed:

IN-; I-; O3 +; O4-; C + - is regarded as a tendency to theft;

G +; O3 +; I-; O-; O4- - is regarded as a tendency to deviant behavior, violation of the structure of the personality. Candidates with similar indicators are not suitable for service in the protection.

The proposed criteria can be used not only in working with candidates, but also with the staff. This model can be taken as the optimal and desirable in the activities of specialists of security structures. It also allows you to identify weaknesses in further work on the formation of a specific team, shift and draw up a plan for a correctional training program for employees.