Security Officer - Recensione dipendente - Security Officer presso Marpol Security

nice people to work with and for

long commute but thats not companies fault!

Pay arrives on time (most weeks), you get to sit down for parts of the shift (unlike the poor guards out in the field), and there are occasionally decent colleagues who share the frustration. That’s literally it – the “benefits” end there.

This company’s entire model is built on squeezing maximum effort from employees for minimum cost. Security officers earn around £12.50/hour – just 29p above the national minimum wage – yet they’re forced into a punishing regime: 12-15 hour shifts with 25-45 minutes of constant walking every single hour, scanning excessive numbers of QR codes on inflexible routes, often in poorly lit, uneven, or outright hazardous areas. There’s barely any downtime; proper breaks are a myth because the relentless schedule and faulty tech eat into everything. The Timegate app is a constant nightmare – it crashes repeatedly indoors, GPS fails routinely, and check calls become a frustrating battle just to log them. Guards end up using personal phones and data to workaround the company’s broken system, yet they’re still punished for any delays or missed scans caused by the tech itself. Mobile roles are hyped as “better” at £14.50/hour, but that’s a pathetic £1-£2 bump – £12-£24 extra over a long shift – while piling on invasive tracking via vehicle GPS and body cameras. In many other security companies, mobile patrol roles do not require body-worn cameras or this level of tracking. You’re under microscope surveillance 24/7 for a marginal increase in pay. From the Control Room, complaints about fatigue, app failures, workload, and burnout were ignored daily. Management’s priority is winning cheap contracts by overworking staff, not wellbeing or fair treatment. Turnover is sky-high because people burn out fast and realise they can get similar (or better) pay elsewhere for half the physical and mental strain, less monitoring, and actual respect. This isn’t “hard work” – it’s deliberate underpayment for extreme output. For the same money at competitors, you’ll have reasonable patrols, reliable tech, and breaks that actually exist. Avoid this company unless you’re desperate; This is not about the work being difficult. It is about near-minimum pay paired with extreme physical demands and constant surveillance. For the same money at other companies, patrols are more reasonable, systems are more reliable, and breaks actually exist.