March, being International Women’s History Month, is the ideal time not only to spotlight influential and impactful female leaders in the security industry but also the organizations to which these people lend their considerable talents. Foremost among these formidable females is Heidi Pascale. The vice president of marketing and training for ASSA ABLOY Door Security Solutions brings 20-plus years of experience leading the company’s event management team and helping its people shine.
In this exclusive conversation with Security Sales & Integration, Pascale traces her career progression, highlights ASSA ABLOY’s profound commitment to training and education, explains how the company extends its training resources to customers and partners, and delves into ASSA ABLOY’s efforts to foster an inclusive environment in which everyone has a seat at the table.
Growing Within ASSA ABLOY
With a background in communications and event hospitality, Pascale began her career at ASSA ABLOY nearly a quarter-century ago, starting on the metaphorical bottom rung as an event planner and working her way up.
“I’ve seen the evolution of the organization,” she reminisces, saying the company has expanded from six brands to 31 brands in North America.
Pascale’s professional remit expanded in turn, with duties growing to include trade show management, the ASSA ABLOY Mobile Innovation Showroom, internal and external incentive trips, and much more.
“That kind of parlayed or segued into taking on ASSA ABLOY Academy,” she adds, “which is our training arm to [prepare] folks with product training [and] professional development to onboard, upskill and credential our own internal people, as well as our customers.”
And that, really, is where our story begins. ASSA ABLOY Door Security Solutions’ commitment to training and education has endured for years. However, as products became more advanced, the company realized the necessity of investing even more into training to keep employees and customers alike up to date with the technological revolution.
After all, Pascale recalls, just 10 years ago, customers depended on mechanical locks; now, wireless online access control systems have come to the fore.
“The future is going to be staying on top of those trends and always being a step ahead of them,” she declares, “so that we’re ready with the solution.”
ASSA ABLOY Academy
ASSA ABLOY Academy is central to that bold vision. The company’s in-house team provides technical training not only to employees but, in fact, to anyone in the door and hardware industry. The ASSA ABLOY Academy team includes several trainers who conduct in-person classes throughout the country.
“I think there’s about 150 years’ worth of door hardware experience among them,” Pascale says. “All they do, day in and day out, is go out and teach about our solutions.”
Emphasizing that the training is hands-on, she adds, “Being able to have that hands-on experience and interacting with our products as they would in a real facility has been very well received.”
Democratizing Access to Exceptional Training and Education
Notably, ASSA ABLOY also boasts a learning management system to provide online courses. This democratizes access to critical information about the door and hardware industry, and it includes capabilities to assign courses and track training activities.
“This commitment to training and education has given us a best-in-class employee base that acts as a valuable resource to our customers,” Pascale enthuses.
Arguably, the company’s most effective strategy for democratizing ASSA ABLOY Academy resources is making them available to customers and industry partners.
“A lot of our partners and customers don’t have the luxury of having a learning platform of their own,” Pascale observes. “They can come in and use our platform as their own.”
Indeed, ASSA ABLOY developed a Career Path Management program that enables customers/partners to create a group for their employees in ASSA ABLOY Academy. Customers/partners can then create learning plans for their employees by choosing from the existing catalog of courses. Moreover, it’s possible to set deadlines and track program completions — all at no charge.
Pascale cares deeply about the mission to keep people safe and secure. Image courtesy of ASSA ABLOY.
Undergirding all these efforts is ASSA ABLOY’s deep commitment to playing a beneficial role within society.
“For the industry at large, our responsibility is to keep people safe and secure,” Pascale says.
Training is critical to making products function properly and meeting prevailing codes and standards. And in a world in which unthinkable events occur with tragic frequency, keeping up to speed with new technologies and identifying the right solutions can mean real lives being saved.
“We need to be able to carry our customers through that evolution,” Pascale says earnestly.
Mindful and Conscientious
This mindful attitude and this conscientiousness suffuse ASSA ABLOY, a leading vendor in an industry that, at least historically, has been somewhat homogenous in its male-heavy composition. Pascale harks back to the first industry event she attended two decades ago. She actually has a photo, showing 210 people in the room — of whom only eight were women.
Thankfully, over the past two decades, Pascale has witnessed a huge shift, with many incredibly talented women — her right among them — blazing the trail for the next generation of women to follow.
“I definitely feel like I have a voice,” she reflects, “and I also feel like it’s my responsibility to make room at the table. There’s a seat for everyone, and it’s my responsibility as a female to pull up that chair for the next female in line.”
Concurrently, ASSA ABLOY, with its abiding commitment to diversity — not only with respect to gender but also across the board — creates an environment conductive to everyone’s growth and success. The company’s ethos shines through with its “Uplift” and “Emerging Professionals” community initiatives.
The former is a women’s network within ASSA ABLOY that hosts guest speakers and panel discussions, while, more broadly, seeking to empower women. The latter is for younger professionals, offering them a platform to build their own network as they climb the ranks within ASSA ABLOY. And that, notably, is precisely what the company wants: Young talent who are ready to ascend the ladder, just as Pascale did.
“If they’re going to move to a new position, we want them to stay with the organization,” she states. “That’s been a huge initiative for us.”
Attracting Fresh Talent, New People
ASSA ABLOY is equally mindful about recruitment as it is about retention, believing that it’s incumbent upon our industry’s pillars to do everything possible to attract fresh, new talent to security careers. This includes recruiting students directly out of school.
“We started Foundation Training Programs to provide an accelerated learning experience and give these industry newcomers the skills necessary to succeed on the job and advance their careers,” Pascale explains.
She describes the Foundation Program as taking about two or three years of door and hardware industry knowledge and fast-tracking it into six weeks, with topics running the gamut from ASSA ABLOY brands, to its product continuum, to how to write a specification, to product pricing.
Underlining the program’s success, Pascale shares with pride that, tracing back to 2016, 98% of the people who have gone through the program are still with the organization today.
ASSA ABLOY: A True Thought Leader
It’s clear that ASSA ABLOY Door Security Solutions leads the door and hardware industry. Perhaps even more importantly, however, it’s a thought leader in the industry community. From sustainability to building information technology, and from training and education to inclusion and belonging, the ASSA ABLOY team is well-positioned to lead the conversation about the constellation of factors that keep us safe and secure.
Even as the organization seeks to leverage robotics and AI to effectuate a better, safer society, its leadership never forgets that people — not technology — sit at the center of the orbit.
“In our industry, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to replace the power of people,” Pascale concludes. “People are at the center of everything that we do.” And Pascale herself exemplifies this: a respected female executive whose diligent, mindful efforts have helped elevate ASSA ABLOY to its enviable perch as industry leader.
