A Q&A With Our CEO Mike Bullock

In 2021, Corps officially became a social enterprise, but our commitment to making a positive impact on society began with our inception in 1859. We were founded with a clear social mission; to provide gainful employment to service personnel returning from war. This mission remains at the heart of our business but has evolved to ensure we continue to develop what we offer our people, establishing diversity as a core priority and supporting fair working practices.

At Corps, 100% of our profits get reinvested into the business or goes towards supporting charities that support the veteran community, like Combat Stress. In the space of one year, 12,500 veterans benefited from our help, but there’s always more work to do. We caught up with our CEO Mike Bullock to see what’s next.

Mike, how does our social enterprise status guide the business?

Being a social enterprise gives Corps Security purpose that transcends what we do, by focusing on why we do it. There are still the same challenges of running a business, like training and upskilling colleagues, ensuring there’s a return on investment, and seeking new business opportunities. However, as a social enterprise, our every move has so much more conviction. Social value underpins not only our values, but how we conduct our work daily.

Social enterprises must trade for a social or environmental purpose and reinvest at least 50% of profits back into the company to ensure that purpose manifests into being. We reinvest 100% of our profits into both our business and donations to our military charity partners, including Combat Stress and the Soldiers’, Sailors’ & Airmen’s Families Association. That means that we have a framework for decisions that ensure we are doing what’s right in the long-term.

What are Corps’ key priorities for 2024?

Our purpose at our inception in 1859 was to help veterans in need. That remains the case today and we are always looking at ways to support the ex-military community and their wellbeing. That’s why we run events with industry leading professionals to discuss officers’ mental health and develop plans for company-wide and industry-wide support.

In addition to honouring our promise to deliver security with a social mission, we have other streams of focus; the expertise of our skilled officers, the technology they can work with, and the help and support we can offer our colleagues are front and centre of our operations. But, like any responsible business, we’re also thinking about our impact on the environment, and doing what we can to mitigate our carbon footprint. To that end, we’re working with Carbon Neutral Zone and have formally signed up to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), so that we can balance our business endeavours with growing environmental concerns and changing legislation.

What challenges do you envisage, and how is our business going to tackle them?

Honestly, our main issue is attracting the right people that fit with our business and fit to the various roles we have. This is why we’ve invested so much in training and the employee experience we offer. As a LW Recognised Service Provider, more than 95% of Corps’ employees are paid the RLW at minimum. We’ve also invested in our virtual reality (VR) software for officer training. Fully immersive VR training has hugely positive impact our colleague retention and makes the learning experience more enjoyable.

For our officers working in Corps Monitoring and on the technical side of the company, a different skill case is needed, and pay is on average higher. Our NSI Gold Alarm Receiving Centre has recently been accredited by Secured by Design, one of the key police crime prevention initiatives and just last month handled over 250,00 alarm responses with an average response time of just 7 seconds.

Anything else you’d like to reflect on?

As Corps grows, our organisation has the potential to enact more change. Our investment in technology will transform the services we offer and our colleagues will continue to work in the best environment possible.

Read more on our mental health initiatives and how we navigate the current security landscape.