“Customers in the trade have been able to ask us for up to 300 agents… But no security company can get 300 out of them, we have to share certain markets between several companies because we have such a hard time recruiting. “ Ralph Bonan, president of Abscisse Sécurité, a Lyon-based company specializing in events, is mixed. Restaurants, leisure parks, shopping centers … “There have been requests for reinforcement from our customers everywhere since the takeover, observes Walid Nahra, director of the Parisian company Triomphe Sécurité, with more than 3,000 agents. We do our best to satisfy them. “
The control of the health pass, necessary since Monday, August 9 in a large number of establishments open to the public, suddenly exploded the demand for security agents: when their own employees do not have the time, many establishments are have been turning for several weeks to this specialized staff, authorized to verify the famous QR code. “They are in great demand, there was already a shortage of agents on July 9 for the reopening of nightclubs”, comments Laurent Lutse, national president of the Cafés, brasseries and nightclubs branch at the Union des métiers et des industries de l’hôtellerie (UMIH).
The machine has started again
At first glance, controlling the pass sounds like a boon for a profession that has suffered from the Covid-19 crisis. “A whole part of the branch has been shut down, in particular airport security and events, and the business has seen its needs for agents drop”, notes Cédric Paulin, secretary general of the Groupement des entreprises de sécurité, the main employers’ organization in the prevention and private security sector. The smallest companies, many in this sector with 180,000 employees, are the most affected.
While other tasks continued, such as monitoring buildings at night, 65% of companies in the branch experienced a drop in their turnover in 2020 by almost 10% on average, according to a study carried out for the skills operator AKTO. Ralph Bonan lost 2 million euros between 2020 and early 2021, or 25% of his turnover. “I have 190 permanent employees but there could be up to 500 in the event of high activity. In the event, we have a lot of temporary workers because the amount of work is uneven depending on the month, and since the Covid, I have had little recourse to them. “
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