June 16, 2025
In the next edition of our “Professional Progression” series, we are excited to share Tom Colman’s journey so far at Professional Security.
In just 5 months, Tom has made a big impact, bringing fresh insight, energy, and leadership to his role.
I’m the Group Senior Head of Business Support. Day-to-day, I focus on how we deliver support to our internal clients, our operations teams and all the various departments across the business. I lead multiple teams including HR, Technology, Risk, Compliance, Vetting, Resourcing and Group Transformation, ensuring everything we do aligns with our overall strategy. It’s about making sure people have the right support to succeed in their roles.
For me, it’s been stepping out of the large corporate environments like Tesco and Morrisons. Professional Security is a smaller business, but it’s in a major growth phase and has a real start-up mentality. That’s been incredibly insightful, and means that no two days are the same.
The Business Support division certainly needed some development to support the growth of the business. This started with aligning with the wider group strategy and developing credibility amongst the team and wider stakeholders.
A big part of overcoming this challenge has been taking people on that journey with me. We’re doing well at developing internal talent and being selective with external hires. It’s all about creating the right culture and having the right people to drive things forward, even though it’s an evolving challenge every day.
This role is very much a portfolio role, so I’ve had to pick up a lot of new knowledge. A good example is insurance. I didn’t have much experience with it before, but now I’ve learned about policies, aggregates, excesses, reserves, litigation, and working with more litigious stakeholders.
It’s also very different from my previous roles, where I was typically focused on a single function. Here, I’m involved across multiple areas. HR is very different from Risk and Compliance. I have to stay up to date and make sure I understand what’s happening across all fronts.
I believe you should never stop learning and developing, no matter what your job title is, even CEO’s should keep growing. For me, it’s about refining my approach, staying open to new scenarios, and embracing different opportunities. This company is growing so fast that change is constant, which gives me the chance to work with new people and solve new problems all the time.
Absolutely. My role is still evolving and growing. I’m already involved in board-level work such as transformation and technology, and I’m thinking about where that fits in with the Senior Leadership Team and the wider group as we continue to expand. It’s exciting to consider what this role could look like in a year or two.