REVISITING THE HR PRACTICES IN SECURITY GUARD AGENCIES IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

Security has always been a problem for the less developed countries of the world. Poverty, unemployment, and political instability give rise to criminal activities, hence the need for security guard agencies.  Pakistan is also among those countries having severe law and order situations, especially in Karachi (Rao,2023; Rehman et al., 2022). There is a dire need for security guards everywhere. (Khan, 2025). However, those entrusted with the security should be selected very carefully, else they become a security threat themselves. Human Resources plays a pivotal role in the success of organizations; therefore, its management is of crucial importance. The HRM department is not only responsible for providing human resources to the organization, but also for ensuring the right person for the job.  Its functions include strategy related to recruitment, selection, compensation and benefits, training and development, performance appraisal, etc. The purpose of every strategy is to ensure achievement of above-mentioned objective and provision of right candidate that contributes to the growth of organization. Failure to do so may lead to disaster for the organization (Hamza et.al 2021) (Gupta & Shaw 2014). In Pakistan, multiple cases have been reported in the last decade where the security guards were involved in the crimes, indicating several loopholes in the HR practices of their respective agencies. The paper aims to identify the right HR practices required for the security guard agencies that ensure the provision of safety to the customers without compromising it, following the qualitative review analysis.