Diversity is the qualifying criteria for the OSAC Delhi Chapter (DC) Country Council Achievements Awards nomination
The general perception is the business of ‘Security’ is a masculine, male dominated and managed domain of human expertise. The social fabric subtly insinuates that security falls under the purview of male responsibility, ability and capability. The bias is thicker in developing countries like India, resulting largely in exclusion of women partnership in this field.
Diversity challenges on hand
The security functions are and have been challenged by the absence of female security professionals, and cross functional groups such as Business Continuity and Risk Management (BCRM), Travel Security Management, Environment Health and Safety (EHS), thus limiting the 360 degree function security approach. This lack of engagement of the female security professionals and public-private partnership has led to substantive deficit in the cross pollination of knowledge and sharing the best practices.
OSAC Justifies
The Delhi Chapter of the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), US Embassy runs an ‘out-reach program’ for diversity and inclusivity in security domain. It leverages a three-pronged approach to address this challenge.
1. Student engagement initiative
OSAC DC initiated an innovative approach for the first time by engaging with Post Graduate students of all the women’s colleges of ‘Vedica Group.’ The initiative aims at helping them understand the various spheres of security functions and to look at it as one of the ‘first career’ options. The overall intention of inviting these young career professionals to Delhi OSAC meeting was the tipping point, and now they have been regular attendees. OSAC’s All-India General Meeting (AGM) in December 2018 had presence of 32 Vedica students out of the total 330 participants.
2. Multi-functional diversity & inclusion approach
OSAC believes in the concept of inclusion of professionals in security – especially for the female, others cross-functional units’ members, and all of those who work closely to deliver robust security plans on a day to day basis. This effort is being supported and propagated by a conscious awareness and engagement drive leveraging their strengths. As a strategic step forward, Delhi Chapter has a track record of having a female council secretary right from 2015. In addition, the mentoring program by the senior industry chief security officers (CSOs) has been encouraging female security professionals to opt for core operational physical security roles.
3. Equal opportunity
OSAC focuses on enhanced industry engagements in a positive step-up towards public-private partnership. This has been led by way of female OSAC members being invited as speakers/ moderators at large and reputed security industry events/ conferences to share their best practices and technical expertise.
Demonstrated result
- For the first time, Vedica Group of institutions encouraged their students of the batch graduating in 2018 to look at roles within the security domain as part of their campus placements. Vedica students who were already inspired by attending the OSAC meetings opted for security industry for their internships – four (04) of them have already been offered career opportunities by those agencies. Thus, OSAC DC has clearly helped move the security function from the ‘last to the first’ choice for the next generation female professionals.
- Stepped up membership of female professionals in DC from 05 in 2015 to 50+ in 2018 – an increase of 900% in line with the growing female footprint in the corporate industry.
- Positive cross functional engagement of professionals from CSR, BCRM and Travel domains helped make security deliver on a 360-degree approach.
- Delhi Chapter members are being a regular feature in the landscape of all major security events from Security Today summit to IFSEC. The UBM International group has recognized DC members as the trusted jury partner for their annual awards – where out of 04 members, 03 OSAC women professionals are on the panel – recognizing the female talent in the security industry. The enhanced public-private partnerships initiative’s crowning glory was the invitation by UBM to jury members to attend the IFSEC conference as special invitee delegates at Seoul in 2019.
Summary
Diversity augments holistic growth of a function, and also the ability to deliver its true potential. The Delhi Chapter of OSAC has spearheaded a revolution by pioneering the change management in engaging the new millennial female leaders to lead the security functionalities for 21st century as their brand ambassadors. The enhanced diversity engagement of the female security professional and public-private partnership by OSAC DC have fostered a robust security landscape with enhanced collaboration and sharing of the best practices – thereby accomplishing the overall goals of OSAC.
