Group 4 Securicor aims to unify 360,000 employees over 110 countries with its new black and red ‘G4S’ logo that was launched at its head office in Crawley in May.

Debbie McGrath, director of communications at Group 4 Securicor, anticipates that the roll-out on uniforms, vehicles, stationary, signage and promotional goods globally will take up to 18 months.

She states “We’re not going to spend a huge amount of money changing things immediately, instead we will do it gradually, introducing the new material as it’s needed. It should be complete by the end of 2006.”

However, McGrath adds that ideally every company within the group will change its registration name to G4S within the year.

When Securicor and Group 4 Falck merged in July 2004 the logo became a combination of the strongest elements of each brand and in each country there was a different focus, depending on the strongest brand locally.

However, research – carried out internally on 300 managers and externally on 300 customers – revealed that this was not working.

McGrath comments, “People thought we were putting old things together rather than looking to the future. And internally, rather than employees thinking ‘this is our bit of the old and that’s their bit’, we wanted to get everyone rallied around the new.” Globally this approach will also work better as it was proving difficult to measure which was the strongest brand in each country.

The logo and look was created by Stylus Design. A new colour palette – comprising red, white, black and navy – has been introduced across the group and this will provide the basic colour scheme for all uniforms in future.

Mc Grath adds, “We provide the colour palette but each individual business unit and location will choose its own style and fabric because what’s relevant in the UK may not be relevant in Africa. There will also be different styles for different roles ie. aviation, cash, justice and security services.”

She states that so far the feedback has been positive – “the guards love the new uniform” – and that already people are calling the company G4S as it’s shorter.

 

Related articles

G4S urges top 1000 companies to put it to the test – 20-09-05

Or use our enhanced search functionality to find other related articles