Teaming and Partnering
The defence and government contracting industry has proved resilient over the past several years, with new government initiatives, legislation and other funding sources providing businesses opportunity despite turbulent overall economic conditions. Businesses rose to the challenges by remaining receptive to client needs, adapting to change, adopting key technologies and supporting a modern trusted workforce.
Companies of all sizes are growing, positioning themselves to win new contracts and embarking on new initiatives around talent, technology and digital transformation to optimize processes and drive down costs. Businesses are narrowing their focus to core activities and teaming or partnering with synergistic businesses to produce exponentially better results.
Leaders are challenged to be more agile and versatile with their business operations to account for changes in project scope, to monitor shifting funding priorities, and to overcome pervasive supply chain difficulties. Addressing talent shortages has become a ubiquitous concern presenting barriers to business development, information technology, finance and manufacturing. Teaming and partnering is a cost-effective way of bringing more talent on board, even if only in a virtual sense.
Cybersecurity is a concern beyond just IT functions. Insider risk analysis and monitoring is moving away from just a tick-and-flick exercise for business of all sizes, to being recognised as a discipline all of its own at the C-Suite level, cutting across cyber, HR and governance. Personnel security, sponsorship and governance functions are still finding their feet in some instances.
The New DISP Sponsorship Framework
The Defence Industry Security Office (DISO) transformed the Defence Industry Security Program (DISP) in April 2019 with a view to tightening the risk management regime across the various supply chains handling sensitive and secret government information. Private companies consulting into Defence could now sponsor personnel at their accredited levels to get defence and government ready.
Over the last twenty-four months, the Defence Industry Security Branch (DISB) has been implementing a series of DISP uplifts to continue to improve our national security posture, governance frameworks, and multi-stakeholder reporting requirements.
WorkSec Security Officer as a Service delivers a DISP compliant personnel security level 3 onboarding (Baseline, NV1 & NV2), reporting and governance solutions to create a defence and government ready trusted workforce.
Not All DISP Sponsors Are Created Equal
As more professionals enter the cleared careers space, we will continue to see the DISP uplift initiatives shape the playing field of Sponsoring organisations and more private companies will either pass or fail the DISB desk, spot and deep dive audits.
DISP accredited members who are successful in cultivating a robust Security Culture, training and briefing their personnel and meeting the increasing compliance and governance obligations will thrive and thought lead. As we’ve seen in many other growth industries in highly regulated markets, some will take the governance, risk and compliance framework seriously and some will not.
SME Challenges
The Defence Strategic Review (DSR) and AUKUS have caused some uncertainty in defence industry across all domains with a variety of employers adopting a conservative approach to the size of their workforces. The current landscape has seen a sharp drop in demand for permanent workers and an increase in demand for contractors, although each state and territory are affected differently.
Leadership Focus
- Continued support for business development teams to capture opportunities in the market. Teaming and partnering to deliver on contracts.
- Increasing investments in critical functions including finance, procurement and project teams to help reduce manual processes and capture risks before they become systemic.
- Adjusting operations to stay nimble and handle disruptive, global and domestic events.
- Creating processes and operations to adjust to the rapidly evolving needs of the modern, distributed workforce.
- Strategically reducing the cost of doing business, especially around compliance, which is of critical importance on several fronts including personnel security, cybersecurity and diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI).
- Staying abreast of legislative and regulatory changes and operating requirements.
A Cleared and Trusted Workforce
Whilst the ability to sponsor and govern clearance holders by SMEs contracting to defence and government sounds like a perfect fix, the reality is that for organisations with less than 150 clearance holders (and even up to a cleared talent pool of 500 personnel), the cost of in-house Security Officer resourcing can be a challenge.
When you’re just getting started with a team of say 10 – 50 personnel, inhouse Security Officer resourcing doesn’t make sense from a cost/benefit analysis. Often, Security Officer duties are just another hat a line manager needs to add to an already full plate of responsibilities and deliverables.
Anecdotally we hear the same thing:
“I don’t know where I’m supposed to find the time to keep up with the onboarding and governance requirements, let alone manage them all.” – Managing Director, Manufacturing Company of 120 staff
The talent market is tight and the complexities are gaining momentum by the minute.
WorkSec Security Officer as a Service solves this dilemma for our many small to mid- sized corporate clients, with mandatory PSFP 12 Employment Suitability Checks, AGSVA myClearance Application readiness, DISP sponsorship (Baseline, NV1 and NV2), reporting, security awareness trainings and briefings, changes in circumstances reporting management, overseas travel briefings and debriefings, spot checks and all other associated aspects of PERSEC Level 3 governance.
Security Officer as a Service
Partnering with WorkSec to sponsor your cleared and trusted workforce allows you to clear some of your inbox and focus on your core business secure in the knowledge you have a specialist team managing your PERSEC requirements.
WorkSec Security Officers work with your Chief Security Officer (for DISP member companies) or your nominated Point of Contact to meet and satisfy the ongoing security clearance holder ternary reporting obligations to the Australian government.
Next Steps?
To discover how we can support augment your personnel security governance and ready your business to deliver into defence and government supply chains with a cleared and trusted workforce click on Get Started to start the dialogue. Through our specialist partner, we can also assist with your DISP application.
Director Culture & Brand, author and strategist, shaping trusted leadership and thriving teams through transformation and growth.
