CASE STUDY: New Systems Help Plan International Manage Its Human Resources Founded in 1937, Plan International is one of

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CASE STUDY: New Systems Help Plan
International Manage Its Human Resources
Founded in 1937, Plan International is one of the oldest and
largest children’s development organizations in the world,
promoting rights and opportunities for children in need. With
global headquarters in Surrey, UK, the organization has operations
in more than 70 countries (including 51 developing nations in
Africa, Asia, and the Americas), and worked with 81.5 million
children in more than 86,676 communities in 2014. Plan
International has grown steadily over the years and has more than
1,200 paid staff members and more than 9,000 volunteers. Plan
International is not affiliated with any religious or political
group or government. It obtains about half of its funding from
donations from corporations, governments, and trusts and the rest
from individuals willing to sponsor a child. Plan International
works with children, families, communities, and local governments
to bring about positive change for children in health, education,
water and sanitation, protection, economic security, and coping
with catastrophes such as wars, floods, earthquakes, and other
natural disasters. For example, Plan has sent workers to help
children affected by the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and
the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa. In addition to
coordinating emergency response efforts, Plan runs public health
information campaigns and trains health and aid workers. Plan’s
objective is to reach as many disadvantaged children as possible,
and this requires a highly coordinated approach. When an emergency
strikes, Plan must locate and deploy the most appropriate resources
wherever they are required. To accomplish this a disaster relief
team at Plan’s head office must sift through data on all of its
10,000 aid workers in 70 countries to see which people have the
appropriate skills and experience in medical aid, child protection,
education, and shelter management to provide the necessary
services. Typically, the people chosen to respond to a specific
emergency will have a variety of skills, including frontline
workers with knowledge of the language and the local area. Plan now
has the ability to see data about all of its workers’ skills the
moment an emergency occurs, so it can respond immediately with the
right team of people. The plan is now able to instantly assemble
pertinent information about its workers because of its new human
resources (HR) systems. The human resources systems allow Plan to
track not only the skills people bring when they are hired but also
any additional training or experience they have acquired for
disaster response emergencies while working for Plan. The human
resources systems also help Plan manage the grants and donations it
receives. When a donation first comes in, it is sent to Plan’s
London headquarters and allocated from there. If, for example, Plan
receives a $40 million grant to use in Sierra Leone, Plan will need
different people to manage that grant for Plan. The plan needs to
be able to scan the organization globally to find the right people.
Before the new human resources systems were implemented, Plan was
working with very outdated decentralized systems that were
partially manual. The organization had to keep track of employees
using a patchwork of 30 different human resources systems,
spreadsheets, and documents. It could take weeks to locate people
with the right language skills, disaster experience, and medical
training. When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, Plan had
to email everyone asking if staff knew any people who could speak
French, had the appropriate disaster management skills, and we're
available to help. In 2012 Plan began looking for a human resources
system that could handle its growing global workforce, support
common processes across all regions, and deliver information on a
secure mobile platform in regions where technology infrastructure
was not well developed. The organization selected a cloud-based HR
system from SAP’s SuccessFactors as well as on-premises software
from SAP, which satisfied these requirements and are integrated
with one another. Implementation of the new system began in May
2013. It took only 16 weeks to implement a fully working system at
Plan’s international headquarters, and all of Plan’s international
regions were brought onto the system by 2014. The cloud-based
SuccessFactors system runs in remote computer centers managed by
SuccessFactors and is accessible to users via the Internet. The
system provides a centralized employee profile with a comprehensive
view of employee skill sets, expertise, experience, and career
interests. Through an intuitive interface, employees can update
their own information, creating an easily searchable INTERACTIVE
SESSION: ORGANIZATIONS New Systems Help Plan International Manage
Its Human Resources 80 Part One Organizations, Management, and the
Networked Enterprise directory that every employee can access. The
plan uses SuccessFactors software modules for recruiting,
performance and goals, succession and development, compensation,
and learning. The plan also implemented SuccessFactors Workforce
Planning and on-premises SAP Personnel Administration and
Organization Management software. Workforce planning entails
systematic identification and analysis of what an organization is
going to need in terms of the size, type, experience, knowledge,
skills, and quality of its workforce to achieve its business
objectives. SAP’s Personnel Administration software manages
employee recordkeeping and organizational data concerning the
recruitment, selection, retention, development, and assessment of
personnel. SAP’s Organization Management software enables
organizations to depict and analyze their organizational and
reporting structures. The new human resources systems provide a
bird’s-eye view of the entire Plan workforce, showing immediately
how many people work for Plan, where they are located, what skills
they possess, their job responsibilities, and their career paths.
Plan’s central human resources staff spend much less time chasing
information. For example, assembling and analyzing data from
employee performance reviews, including 4. How did these systems
improve operational efficiency? 5. How did these systems improve
decision-making? Give examples of two decisions improved by Plan’s
new systems. performance-based salary calculations used to take up
to six months. Now, all it takes is the push of a button. Employees
are able to access their human resources records online and update
information such as an address, family details, and emergency
contacts. By enabling employees to perform these tasks themselves,
Plan saves valuable human resources staff time, which can be
directed toward more value-adding work. The plan is also able to
show its donors exactly how their contributions were spent and the
results. Using SuccessFactors and SAP human resources software,
Plan staff are able to identify and dispatch relief workers to
disaster areas within hours. When Typhoon Haiyan struck the
Philippines in November 2013, Plan specialists were on the scene
within 72 hours. Being able to deploy staff to emergencies so
rapidly has saved more lives. What’s more, Plan’s improved response
time has helped it secure new sources of funding by giving it more
credibility with governments, corporations, and other sources of
grants and donations.
Source: Management Information Systems: Managing the
Digital Firm (15th Edition, 2017, pp 80-81)
CASE QUESTIONS
1. Describe the problem faced by Plan International. What
management, organization, and technology factors contributed to
this problem?
2. Describe the system solution to this problem. Describe the
types of systems used for the solution.
3. Why are human resources so important at Plan
International?
4. How did these systems improve operational efficiency?
5. How did these systems improve decision-making? Give examples
of two decisions improved by Plan’s new systems.