Maria Setu – Taranaki Regional Manager

Maria’s duties range from financial management and overseeing the branch’s operations and administrative functions, sales, through to account management for local businesses…and more.  On occasions has even filled in on the frontline when needed.

“It’s an incredibly busy and varied role and no days are the same,” she says.

“Being a prioritiser and multi-tasker are important in this role, and I always say it’s a mum thing because I draw upon a lot of my motherhood skills.

Motherhood has given Maria some very useful skills that she uses every day at work.

Maria laughs and says other useful mum skills are having a finely honed ‘nonsense’ radar, eyes in the back of her head and also empathy.

She worked most of the way through when her now adult son was young and gained another useful skill she has brought to the job – juggling things and making them work even when it seemed impossible.

Even though security is a male-dominated industry, Maria has always felt equally valued.

“I’ve always been of the view that it doesn’t matter whether you’re male, female or other, what race or whatever else you are, it’s what you bring to the job that matters.

“It has been great to see that Armourguard clearly holds the same view and has a good mix of sexes at all levels of the company – from the frontline to upper management.”

Caitlin-Jayne Dench, Christchurch Operations Support

Caitlin-Jayne is a “Jill of all trades” for, on top of her very busy operations support duties, she also fills in as a patrol guard regularly.

This gives her deep insights into our customers and their needs, and also what our frontline security team needs in order to provide great service.

Her operations support role involves everything from rostering guards and patrols, and client liaison through to fleet car WoF and maintenance bookings, and guard training. What’s more, she recently took it upon herself to create guard training modules that are now being considered for use across the whole company.

“My job is incredibly busy and varied. I love working under pressure and, like many women, am great at multi-tasking,” she laughs.

Caitlin-Jayne says being a woman helps in other ways, too. “I find the male and female guards often feel comfortable about coming to me with issues that they may feel reluctant to go to a male about.”

And being female most definitely helps when it comes to frontline patrol guard work.

“When doing noise complaint visits, being a woman helps because members of the public tend to be less aggressive towards me than might be the case if they were dealing with a male security officer.”