Interviews
Dispensing the right risk medicine
The phrase “no man is an island entire of itself” expresses the idea that human beings perform badly when isolated from others and need to be part of a community in order to thrive. Non-gender specific, the ancient line, coined by seventeenth century metaphysical poet John Donne, resonates today in a world where COVID-19 has had an insular and isolating effect on the daily lives and mental health of millions of people working from home and forced to maintain social distance from each other.
Isolation has its place, but people often require the inspiration of others to create and motivate them in both the physical and virtual worlds, particularly when it comes to those team leaders whose presence and charisma helps foster positivity and the motivational fire power to inspire colleagues and industry peers alike. It is ironic, therefore, that one such tour de force is named after an island, albeit a remote location with its own ancient and mystical life-affirming qualities. Iona Blake, Boots’ security and incident manager, was given the name of the tiny fragment of rock (three miles long by one mile across), famed as the fifth century “Cradle of Christianity,” off the south-west coast of Mull in the Inner Hebrides after a visit by her mother while she was pregnant.
Iona is a paradox that is explained by the fact that although the island is home to only 120 permanent residents, it has a magnetic attraction and holds a special meaning for many people the world over. More than 130,000 visitors make an annual pilgrimage to this tiny location, treating the island as some form of talisman with the capacity to recharge their batteries or reset their lives through quiet contemplation or by communing with its legendary spiritual energy. According to Iona’s official tourist literature: “It is striking to remark that despite the numbers of visitors to the island, the pervading feeling that people leave with is one of peace and restoration.”
“My mother visited the island and said it was very peaceful, which is how I got the name,” said Leicestershire-born Iona whose less-than-quiet job today involves its own kind of watching the horizon and reading the risk runes, as well as strategy development and future-thinking around the areas of loss prevention and security for customers, pharmacy patients, colleagues, and stores. Despite the pressures of the day job, Iona Blake is an island of calm surrounded by a turbulent ocean but equipped with a “can-do” personality and technology to navigate the difficult waters and crashing waves while her drive and enthusiasm inspires her team to bring their own best to one of the UK’s oldest and most-iconic high street brands.
On the Front Lines
With almost 2,500 health and beauty stores across the UK, 90 per cent of the UK population is purportedly within ten minutes of their nearest Boots. While the business employs 54,000 colleagues, 22,000 of whom are healthcare providers and 6,350 are qualified pharmacists, Iona and her team have their work cut out for them as they protect people and property across a vast estate that includes local chemists, flagship stores, and travel and airport locations.
The business has been on the front foot of actively lobbying Government for separate legislation to protect shop workers because it recognises that “colleagues are at the centre of everything the business is about” and played a vital role in keeping the nation healthy throughout the pandemic. Despite this front-line role, and the fact that the vast majority of customers show patience, colleagues including pharmacists have been subjected to increased incidents of violence and aggression, which has prompted the call for specific legislation along the lines unanimously voted through by the Scottish Parliament in September.
While the business pursues Westminster for support, it has also been engaging stores around its Keep Yourself Safe campaign, which has been supported across the business with literature, videos, executive vlogs and updates, case studies from colleagues, and regular staff touchpoints in order to provide consistent, accurate, and up-to-date information to stores around their safety and well-being as Government guidelines change.
“Although safety and loss isn’t always the most sexy topic, we’ve tried to bring it to life on our employee social network, Yammer, creating GIFs and graphics such as the A-Z of Colleague Safety, where each letter represents something pertinent to stores,” said Iona. “This has allowed us to be more flexible in our approach to colleagues and means we can respond and adapt to changes and updates more quickly, but equally importantly, it also allows colleagues to get involved, be engaged, and have their say.”
This engagement has always been central to Boots, which has been synonymous with the city of Nottingham since John Boot opened a small herbalist store on Goose Gate in 1849. For almost 100 years, Boots has had its headquarters spread across a massive 279-acre site in Beeston, which was purchased by the company in 1927 to expand the company’s manufacturing capability. It was here that the ubiquitous ibuprofen was invented along with leading brands such as No7, Boots Soltan, Botanics, and Boots Pharmaceuticals, all of which continue today.
During the summer of 2020, the Beeston site also became the location for a new drive-through testing station for COVID-19, which was specifically for National Health Service (NHS) staff by invitation only. Seb James, managing director of Boots UK and Republic of Ireland, praised this move: “I am extremely proud that Boots is supporting COVID-19 testing for NHS workers. Boots has been at the heart of UK healthcare for 171 years and has always come forward to support the community in times of need.” The programme, using Boots volunteers and complementing its existing pharmacy services and community care provision already working under pressure during the lockdown, was then rolled out to other UK locations, although not to Boots stores so as to allow retail colleagues to focus on supporting customers and patients during the pandemic.
It is also within the Beeston location that Iona has her own island of calm from which she can survey her domain—the CMC (CCTV Monitoring Centre) control room that provides her with “eyes on” intelligence of 24/7 risk across the estate. This security operations centre not only provides dial-in audio and video broadcast evidence of incidents as they are happening in real time, but also reduces the demands on over-stretched Police forces, which are now only notified to attend stores when absolutely necessary. Iona is proud to have supported the development of the five-year-old CMC into what it is today.
“The CMC has evolved considerably from its first inception to become the innovative set-up that it now operates as,” she said. “We’re proud to be leading the way but equally proud at how we’ve worked with our retail partners in sharing the benefits that we’ve achieved and the difference it genuinely makes to colleagues on the shop floor.”
Apart from a deterrence against violence and aggression from shoplifters or customers not following social distancing protocols, for example, it provides an evidence feed of incidents, the so-called “eyes on the prize” visualisation of a crime in action that can lead to the engagement of local Police forces or security teams, day or night, while at the same time eliminating the scourge of false alarm activations. General retail figures suggest that the majority of burglar or fire alarm call-outs are triggered through false or malicious activity, a problem that previously led many Police forces to refuse to attend retail stores where false alarms were too frequent.
“This CMC is part of the journey we have been on as a business,” said Iona. “In the summer of 2017, the CMC became part of my world as we battled with increasing levels of violence and aggression against our store colleagues and pharmacists. We want to move away from a legacy situation of false alarms where we’re asking keyholders, often pharmacists who had to be fully functioning in their dispensaries in order to trade safely for customers the next day, to get out of bed in the middle of the night to respond to an alarm. It was not an acceptable situation.”
The 24/7 monitored CCTV has also had a real community benefit with events unrelated to trading hours brought to the attention of the right authorities in real time.
“We have been able to help elderly people who have turned up confused for prescriptions in their pyjamas in the middle of the night and also successfully intervened in a case of potential domestic violence outside one store,” said Iona. “Through the cameras and our ability to broadcast in real time, we have been able to protect the communities where we live and work through being able to raise the issue with the right emergency service and provide them with digital evidence, which we can burn off copies of for their benefit.”
This was the case in last November’s London Bridge attack where internal broadcasts offered colleagues and customers reassurance that they were safe. Iona said, “We had a number of nearby stores that were in various states of dynamic evacuation and invacuation, and during the incident, support was given to the store teams and their customers through the broadcasting mechanic in those stores.”
Such examples, according to Iona, demonstrate the real, wider community benefits of the CMC. She continued, “It also presents a strong business case as we are able to use management intelligence to measure our impact on safety and security and therefore demonstrate a real benefit and purpose beyond that of profit.”
With a tiny team of three direct reports and twelve security personnel in the CMC, Iona’s brief is far-reaching. In a business that includes the potential for confrontational situations from the shop floor to the pharmacy counters dealing with vulnerable customers with often complex conditions and challenges, she is accountable for the response and resolution of incidents of violence, aggression, and serious incident management as they occur across the estate under the watchful eyes and ears of the CMC.
The facility increases its vigilance during the winter months where there is an additional focus upon preventing burglaries across the estate, and the video and audio capabilities come into their own for capturing real-time footage of attempts for Police evidence packs. Apart from educating the business through a detailed people safety and security agenda that wraps a protective blanket around colleagues, customers, patients, property, and cash, Iona has ownership of security around the wider estate including the logistics guarding provision.
Not an Island
But as we have already established, Iona is not the island of her namesake, and as she is the first to admit, she can’t do the job alone. Monitoring and responding to security threats that may impact the business directly or indirectly relies upon the ability to reach out to a wider web of support, including her tight-knit group of suppliers and other public and private agencies, as part of a more strategic and collaborative intelligence-led approach.
She elaborated: “Once every four weeks, my suppliers get together to troubleshoot problems in a collaborative way, a meeting which was a result of me saying that I can’t do this job on my own and that the way forward is for us all to work together. This works really well, despite the fact that they are all competitors. They all appreciate that it’s not about point scoring or egos but assisting as a group of experienced risk professionals who are happy to work together to problem-solve in a meaningful and transparent way, which is a tremendous benefit to the business.”
Externally, Iona also plugs into a wide range of support bodies and agencies. She sits on the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) Operations Community (previously called the Heads of Security) panel, and she is also a member of ORIS Forums, the not-for-profit organisation that brings heads of risk together to share best practice and intelligence on issues impacting their businesses.
In her day job, she has routine engagement with law enforcement, including the forty-three Police forces across the UK, and she is in regular contact in her Boots or BRC capacity with Government agencies, including the Home Office, the National Crime Agency (NCA), the National Business Crime Centre (NBCC), and the National Retail Crime Steering Group (NRCSG), as part of an intelligence gathering and sharing exercise that allows her to keep plans refined and up to date in terms of the latest business crime threats.
“We have built a lot of traction working in partnership with bodies such as the NBCC. Patrick Holdaway’s help has been invaluable, and I don’t think I could have got through COVID without his day-to-day help,” she said.
Working with other agencies, Iona has also been a key driver of the introduction of the national Police partnership model to provide a minimum standard of care in policing response so that her store teams from Troon to Truro can expect a consistent approach. This is all part of one of Iona’s major initiatives for the Keeping Colleagues Safe campaign, which she has been working on for the last eighteen months.
“This is about instilling a culture of safety through education and engagement, so our teams understand the challenges of the high street in both a COVID and non-COVID world. It’s about working safely and reducing preventable incidents so that no one is complacent.”
Under her stewardship, Boots has been on the front foot by proactively driving the Safer City Initiative in Birmingham in tandem with the city centre’s business improvement district (BID) and West Midlands Police. Working with other retailers and organisations, such the UK’s second city as West Midlands Police and Crime Stoppers, including a five mile radius of Birmingham, the initiative involved staff training and colleagues wearing body cameras in an attempt to reduce conflict and reduce Birmingham’s business crime figures, which have been among the highest in the UK.
“These causes are bigger than Boots,” Iona said, “but they are important to be involved with as a business that employs a lot of people who we want to keep safe on our high streets.”
Background
Working with a diverse range of organisations and personalities is second nature to Iona who began her career working in Topman in Leicester, a job that she described as her first love, before moving into the hospitality sector and honing her people skills working in a pub on a council estate.
“It was a tough pub, but I really enjoyed working in hospitality,” said Iona who went on to be one of the youngest bar managers in the UK at the age of nineteen. She describes her time behind the bar as a vocational learning curve where she got to grips with pulling pints but not punches as she received daily lessons in becoming both a diplomat and a peacemaker, two vital skills that were to prove invaluable in her life in retail risk. It was also where she met her husband to be, Jon, whom she married in 2000 at Filbert Street, the former home of her beloved Leicester City before it moved the short distance to what is now the King Power Stadium. The millennium year was also when Leicester city won what was then the League Cup, a trophy that made a guest appearance in the wedding album.
“We got married in what was the Gordon Banks suite while the reception was in the Gary Lineker Suite,” she recalls fondly. “I’m not ashamed to say that when Leicester won the Premier League in 2016, I cried my eyes out.”
Rather like Iona’s rapid career development—from customer services working for a cable television company to team leader at a toy-testing business before joining Boots in 2008—Leicester’s 5000/1 achievement was groundbreaking, having only earned promotion from the Championship in 2014 and survived the top flight by one point in 2015 in what was locally branded “the great escape season.”
It was also during that period that Iona learned two other lessons that have benefited her career. “I learned to listen and also to brook (not put up with) any trouble—it all comes back to listening and understanding, and it is from this life lesson that you can sometimes make a real difference.”
During her time as a toy tester, a role that involved looking at safety from multiple angles—from the chemicals and electronics involved in the toy’s manufacture to the way a child interacts with it—Iona had her first taste of the world of commercial risk. “I learned early on that a toy could meet all the existing regulations but still be dangerous because a child would not necessarily play with it in the way the tests were designed. Our job was to point out to the manufacturers how a child could get hurt. The role gave me a real insight into risk, legislation, and crisis management.”
Describing her personality type as that of ENFP, extroverted, people-centred, problem-solving, and creative, Iona has brought all of these qualities to her various roles at the UK’s leading health and beauty brand. On her LinkedIn page she says, “Retail colleagues are at the heart of what we do—if we get it right for them, they can get it right for our customers. I’m committed to my people and passionate about my customers.”
A year after joining Boots, she was the winner of the 2009 Retail Week Rising Stars Award, and over her twelve years with the business, she has been shortlisted for a number of internal awards, including Store Support Manager of the Year, the Boots’ Team of the Year award (Senior Customer Managers) that made the national shortlist, and “Legendary Leader” (Security & Incidents) in 2017.
Dance
Iona’s job is all about being versatile and light on her feet, which is where her first passion—dance—has come into its own. Choreographing the ever-moving parts of her role and keeping her team motivated and on their toes comes from years of hard graft as a dancer from ballet to contemporary movement, a path that her two daughters, twenty-year-old Phoebe and eighteen-year-old Georgia, have pursued with equal gusto.
Outside of work, Iona’s relaxation would appear like a full-time job to most people. She has spent many weekends fixing make-up and sequins as well as taxiing the two girls to competitions all over the UK. As they go through further education, they also have their eyes on the prize as part of a touring dance troupe or appearing in pop videos as part of Addict Dance Academy, a Leicester-based educational establishment that offers vocational full-time HND- and degree-level courses.
Iona said, “I was one of those dance mums who would get up on Saturday morning to take them to competitions, but it has been invaluable to them as they have learned discipline and teamwork. With my husband and dogs, it was part of our social life for a long time. The girls have benefited, and we have enjoyed that time. Dance is in my blood. Even in my job, I don’t walk; I often dance the steps.”
As inspired as her mother was when she chose the name, Iona the island is a far cry from Iona the collaborative risk manager, team player, football-loving, dance mentor who always has to be one step ahead of the risk that seeks to wrong-foot Boots and the wider retail community. A formidable and passionate advocate of straight-talking common sense and leaving egos and negative agendas at the door, she has created her own legacy, which has become the polar opposite of remote or lost at sea. In short, Iona is far from a loner.
