CorpComms Magazine

Patrick Toyne-Sewell is very tall. I would suggest he is the tallest communicator within the FTSE 100, but I would be loathe to get into a fight with any potential disgruntled candidates. However, the director of corporate affairs for G4S Secure Solutions (UK & Ireland) is at least 6'3”.

His height is important. When he served as an army officer, it was the cut off point that afforded him a longer than standard issue double bed - which was more suitable for the newly married Toyne-Sewell than the beds that his shorter colleagues coped with.

Toyne-Sewell served for five years and one day, from 1989 to 1994, fulfilling his obligations to the army that had supported his further education. He is modest about his record, claiming he was 'right at the back' during the first Gulf war 'buttering the sandwiches'. He never saw it as a long-term career.

But his time in the British Army has given him an understanding of its culture and the conditions that soldiers operate in, and has undoubtedly helped him in his current role. Indeed, on a recent visit overseas, Toyne-Sewell discovered one of the guys on protective security detail was his old platoon officer from Sandhurst.

G4S is one of the newer brand names in the FTSE 100 index of Britain's leading companies. It was formed five years ago, following the merger of Securicor and Group 4 Falck (which achieved infamy in the 90s after dozens of prisoners escaped while in its custody), but its new black and red image was only formally adopted at the beginning of the year.

By next year, the familiar sight of Securicor vans delivering cash to Britain's high street banks will be all but a memory, as the company rebrands all units under the single umbrella brand.

Size and scale

The name, however, fails to conjure up a scale of the business. G4S is the world's leading international security solutions group and operates in more than 110 countries. It is only missing in Brazil, where foreign security firms are not permitted, and the central belt of Africa. Employing 585,000 people worldwide, with a recruitment drive in India that adds 1,000 staff to its headcount every week, G4S is the second largest private sector employer in the world, after America's retail giant Walmart.

Toyne-Sewell joined in July last year, after G4S acquired competitor ArmorGroup, which provides embassy and convoy security, where he had worked as corporate affairs director for two years.

But he had a long-standing relationship with ArmorGroup when, as a director of Citigate Dewe Rogerson, he had handled the media as the company listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2004. For the next two years, Toyne-Sewell worked on the ArmorGroup account, building its profile and reputation.

He joined Citigate Dewe Rogerson in 1994, recruited by chief executive Jonathan Clare, as an account executive 'and worked my way up'. He even worked on the agency's Securicor account, including handling the media around its merger with Group 4, and helped to develop the communications strategy for the enlarged group.

When ArmorGroup asked him to join with a flattering 'we think you can make a difference' invitation, the timing was just right for Toyne-Sewell who was in his twelfth year with Citigate. 'I had been working in an agency for a long time, and I think I was probably bored,' he says. 'I realised that I was going to have to do something different, but I loved Citigate and I did not want to move to another agency.'

He found the issues surrounding ArmorGroup 'fascinating', adding: 'They included all types of macro political issues involving the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You think you know a business when you work in an agency, but you don't really get that deep understanding that working in-house brings. You don't have the access to the top people or the heads of the business.' When he joined, Toyne-Sewell found himself located next to the chief executive and finance director and working with a 'relatively small management team'.

Having started in Iraq with 20 employees in 2003, ArmorGroup had a force of more than 1,200 staff by 2007 and protected one third of all non-military supply convoys. It also provided security for all UK diplomats in Afghanistan. Over that period, about 30 employees are estimated to have lost their lives.

'There was quite a hostile environment towards private security firms working in Iraq,' he recalls. 'ArmorGroup was caught up in that. We had to explain how we can provide logistics support for the reconstruction process and help protect the national infrastructure. The industry had been too backward in explaining the benefits in using private security firms. People needed to look at the issue in a different way.'

But Toyne-Sewell is adamant that 'we are not soldiers', adding: 'Our position to date is that providing combat forces is a job for the state. It is not something that the private sector should be involved in.' However, G4S does employ 161 Gurkhas who provide pre-deployment training to the British Army.

Moving across

When ArmorGroup was taken over by G4S, Toyne-Sewell expected to move onto new challenges. He was going on holiday when the takeover was announced in March last year. It completed the following May. 'There are not that many companies doing the sort of things that we do. G4S is recognised as a global leader in ethics and regulation for private security companies,' he says.

But Toyne-Sewell is keen to point out that G4S is more than just a security company in war zones. 'We are developing solutions to electronic monitoring,' he says. 'We helped design and build GCHQ in Cheltenham, and managed the transition as staff moved from other buildings. There are all sorts of other aspects to us. Our staff have worked at the Wimbledon Championships for 20 years, for example.'

Every year within the UK and Ireland, G4S takes 39 million meter readings (or 74 every minute), supplies 30 schools and 197 hospitals and healthcare centres with services, assesses 25,000 accommodations for VisitBritain and moves £300 billion in 2,200 cash vehicles.

Sometimes even the staff - more than 40,000 in the UK and Ireland - have difficulty recalling all the businesses, so once a year G4S managers are sent back to the floor for a day. 'I went to one of our prisons, Rye Hill [in Warwickshire],' says Toyne-Sewell. 'But 500 managers went back to the floor in the first year. We also organise roadshows three times a year, where 300 to 400 managers at a time can ask questions of the executive committee.' With staff in far-flung regions of the globe, G4S also relies heavily on newsletters and a comprehensive intranet to keep them informed and up to date. 'They need to understand what we do and how we do it,' says Toyne-Sewell. 'The intranet has 70 to 80 different case studies that they can read and use. But there are lots of locations where they do not have access to the Internet yet.' That may just be another job for G4S.   

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