The introduction of Martyn’s Law has understandably created a great deal of conversation around compliance.
What do we need to do?
What training do our people need?
What policies need to be in place?
Are we compliant?
All important questions.
But I think there is another question organisations should be asking:
If something actually happened tomorrow, would our people know what to do?
Because there is a difference between having a plan and being prepared to use it.
Preparedness starts before an incident
I have spent much of my career working in environments where decisions have to be made quickly, often with incomplete information and sometimes under considerable pressure.
One thing that experience repeatedly teaches you is that the incident itself is only part of the picture.
What happened beforehand?
Was something unusual noticed?
Did somebody see a change in behaviour but dismiss it?
Was information available but never shared?
Did someone have a concern but not feel confident enough to challenge or report it?
Security is not simply about what we do when something happens.
It is also about our ability to notice what is happening around us before it does.
Your people are part of your protective security
CCTV, access control, physical security and good procedures all matter.
But organisations also have something extraordinarily powerful already operating across their premises every day:
People.
Receptionists. Security officers. Bar staff. Facilities teams. Managers. Front-of-house staff. Contractors.
They see people, conversations, routines and behaviours every day.
The challenge is helping them understand what deserves their attention.
That does not mean turning employees into amateur detectives or asking them to profile people who look different.
Quite the opposite.
Effective behavioural awareness is about recognising context, change, clusters and patterns, and incongruence – then having the confidence and communication skills to explore, report or escalate appropriately.
It moves us away from:
“Does that person look suspicious?”
Towards:
“What is happening here, and does it make sense in this context?”
That is a very different conversation.
Behaviour matters
Someone standing outside a building is not inherently suspicious.
Someone asking questions is not inherently suspicious.
Someone appearing nervous is not inherently suspicious.
There are countless innocent explanations for each.
Context changes everything.
What becomes more useful is recognising combinations of behaviour, changes from the expected environment, patterns developing over time, or something that simply does not fit with what is happening around it.
And even then, observation is only the beginning.
What happens next matters enormously.
Can a member of staff start a natural conversation?
Can they listen properly?
Can they ask questions without creating unnecessary confrontation?
Can they make sense of the response?
Do they know when and how to escalate a concern?
Those are human capabilities, not simply security procedures.
Pressure changes people
Preparedness also needs to recognise something else.
People behave differently under pressure.
Decision-making changes. Communication changes. Attention can narrow. People can hesitate, freeze, become overly directive or simply wait for somebody else to take responsibility.
A beautifully written emergency plan cannot account for that on its own.
People need an opportunity to explore what those plans mean in practice.
That might involve tabletop exercises.
It might involve scenario-based discussions.
It might involve realistic simulations.
Sometimes it can simply involve asking a leadership team:
“It is 10:37 on a busy Tuesday morning. This has just happened. What are you going to do?”
Then let the conversation unfold.
Exercises expose assumptions.
They reveal gaps between departments.
They identify uncertainty around decision-making and communication.
Most importantly, they allow organisations to discover those weaknesses before a real incident does it for them.
Martyns’s Law : from compliance to capability
Martyn’s Law represents an important development in protective security.
But there is a danger with any legislation that the objective gradually becomes satisfying the requirement rather than understanding why the requirement exists.
A certificate does not create capability.
A policy does not create confidence.
And a training course that is forgotten the following week does little to improve preparedness.
The real opportunity is to use Martyn’s Law as a catalyst for something more valuable:
A security-aware organisational culture.
One where people notice.
Where they are curious rather than complacent.
Where unusual behaviour can be explored professionally.
Where concerns can be raised without embarrassment.
Where people understand their role during an incident.
And where plans are tested rather than simply stored.
The Practical Edge
At The Bureau Consultancy, our approach sits at the intersection of behaviour, communication, leadership and protective security.
Our flagship ECAS – Enhanced Communication, Awareness & Security programme develops the practical communication, awareness and interpersonal skills that help people operate more confidently and effectively within security-conscious environments.
Sitting alongside ECAS is Vigilant Edge™, our specialist behavioural awareness programme.
Vigilant Edge™ develops people’s ability to understand Context, Culture, Change, Clusters & Patterns, and Congruence – our 5Cs framework – before using observation, conversation and professional curiosity to better understand what they are seeing.
Together, these programmes move beyond simply telling people to “be vigilant.”
They provide practical tools to understand:
What to notice. Why it might matter. And what to do next.
Our wider protective-security work includes organisational assessments, crisis-management support, scenario development and immersive exercising – helping organisations move beyond knowing what their plans say to understanding whether those plans will actually work.
The aim isn’t to create fear.
And it isn’t to turn everybody into a security professional.
It is to develop something much more useful:
People who are more aware, more confident and better prepared to act when something doesn’t feel right.
Because ultimately, Martyn’s Law may establish the requirement.
But people create preparedness.
