Hiring Lessons Learned from the 2012 London Summer Olympics

A review of the problems in the staffing of the 2012 Summer Olympics, focusing on the problems of security firm G4S trying to hire private security guards.

The 2012 Summer Olympics have just finished up, and the general public consensus is that London (and the rest of Great Britain) put on a jolly good show. There were, of course, a few snafus, including some not very spectator-friendly venues, some transportation issues and a serious shortage of private security personnel to supplement the London Police Department and other British law enforcement agencies, but the opening and closing ceremonies were smash hits, and all in all it was a quite successful Olympics.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

Private security titan G4S had been involved in the security plans for the London Summer Olympics since the earliest stages of planning, but until late December 2011, the company was only responsible for providing 2000 security guards in Manchester and London (as well as supplying several thousand more specialized security personnel in other capacities). However, when other security firms began to notify the British government that they were unable to hire the security guards they had contracted to provide. G4S negotiated with the government to provide a total of 10,400 security guards at various venues all across Great Britain.

This, of course, meant that G4S was going to be hiring and training over 8000 additional security guards in a roughly six month period. G4S management was unfailingly positive about their plans for the Olympics until just a couple of weeks before the opening ceremony, at one point in early July even boasting "G4S was managing the London Games so well, the company could provide security for two Olympics at the same time."

Not surprisingly, pride goeth before a fall and it turned out G4S was not able to meet their commitments, not even close in fact, as it turned out they were only able to provide in the range of 5000 private security guards for the Olympic venues. This major hiring snafu turned into a huge debacle for G4S and CEO Nick Buckles, so bad in fact that the company stock on the London Stock Exchange took an almost 10% hit in the week before the Olympics began. G4S' hiring failure meant the British government had to step in to provide an additional 3500 soldiers for security at the various Olympic venues, in addition to the 7000 soldiers already deployed in airports, railway stations and other critical infrastructure locations across the country.

Hiring Lessons Learned

In retrospect in turns out that one of the most important hiring lessons learned at the 2012 London Summer Olympics is to stay focused on careful planning and avoid overcommitment. G4S just assumed they could ramp up their security guard hiring and training programs, like it was a simple exercise in economy of scale. The experiences of the smaller English security firms in not being able to hire the manpower should have been a hint to G4S that they really needed to jump on things if they were going to make it happen. But instead of digging things up and finding out that a large percentage of the potential pool of security guard applicants could not pass the required background checks, they just assumed they could ramp up their hiring program and train the new hires as fast as they came in.

The humbling failure of G4S is a valuable object lesson for executives and HR managers at firms of all sizes. It can be summed up in the old country saying "Don't bite off more than you can chew."

Copyright Clayton Browne. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.

Clayton Browne - Clayton Browne has a BA and an MS in Anthropology, and has been writing professionally since 1994. He worked for many years in both ...

Source: http://suite101.com/article/hiring-lessons-learned-from-the-2012-london-summer-olympics-a411020

joel osteen emmy rossum jay z and beyonce the big chill tony blankley charles barkley beyonce