The Organisation
Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. We believe in the power and potential of every child but know this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination. And it is girls who are most affected.
Working together with children, young people, supporters and partners, we strive for a just world, tackling the root causes of the challenges girls and vulnerable children face. We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood and we enable children to prepare for and respond to crises and adversity. We drive changes in practice and policy at local, national and global levels using our reach, experience and knowledge.
For over 85 years, we have rallied other determined optimists to transform the lives of all children in more than 80 countries.
We won’t stop until we are all equal.
The Opportunity
In Operations, our vision is ‘to be a globally trusted partner in the organisation’s delivery of life-changing programmes for girls and young women’.
We aim to do this by ‘providing the robust financial and supply chain systems, reports, tools and data, and the skilled people to enable successful project delivery. We equip our customers with the insights, capabilities, and expert advice that they need to change lives’.
Plan International embarked on an ambitious and exciting strategic change initiative to make the organisation more transparent, legitimate, and agile. Strengthening our financial and supply chain planning, decision making, and analytics is a key enabler in attaining our strategic goals.
Our Regional Finance Director provides critical leadership to ensure that Plan International Inc.’s finances in the WACA Region adhere to external and internal financial standards and donor regulations. The Regional Finance Director ensures that Regional Management and the Global Hub (GH) finance function are alerted to financial risks and opportunities in the WACA Region, while also providing strategic analysis on the business environment, with a key focus on implementing solutions in a cost-effective way by determining the requirements of a project or program and communicating them clearly to the WACA Hub office (RO), as well as Country Offices (CO).
This role is responsible for the finances of the WACA Region. Although COs have a Country Finance Director/Manager and team who have responsibility for internal financial standards and donor regulations, the regional role has oversight of the COs. The Regional Finance Director monitors the performance of all COs, ensuring that financial standards are high across the region, identifying areas of concern and implementing a strategy to ensure all COs hit key KPIs. The regional hub works with the COs to strengthen their finance capacity. The Regional Finance Director is part of the WACA Regional Management Team whose remit is broader than just finance. This role is also part of the Finance Leadership Team and as such participates actively in the global functions strategy development and continuous improvement.
Dimensions of the role;
- Management of 19 staff: Head of Business Process and Solutions, Regional Finance Controller, Regional Finance Specialist Roving Finance Manager, 15 Country Finance Managers/Directors. The latter 15 are in a matrix management arrangement with Country Directors
- Leadership of financial services provided to countries managing a combined budget of €250m and to the regional office which has its own budget of approximately €4m
- Signatory on regional office and country bank accounts
- An approver of financial transactions subject to the prevailing Global financial authorisation policy (maximum of €500k)
- Delivery of internal and external financial reporting requirements to regional management and Plan’s Global Hub
- The position supports the Regional Director, Finance and IT in developing global financial standards, policies and systems
- Member of the Global Finance Leadership Team
- Member of the Regional Management Team
- Regional Finance Management
- Financial Planning and Monitoring
- Internal Financial Controls and Financial Risk Management
- Grants Finance Management
- Financial and Business Analysis
- Assisting with the business case and cost-effective way of running business
- Analyse organization requirements and provide input to RH management and GH to improve, translate, and simplify requirements.
- Support the development of the Finance functions’ three-year strategy and underpinning transformation initiatives.
The Requirements
Leadership behaviours:
- Provides Strategic Leadership for the region, acting as a partner in the delivery of outcomes.
- Develops, motivates, coaches and manages finance teams in the region.
- Promotes high performance and continuous improvement by all staff.
- Promotes innovation and ongoing learning and development of all teams within the region.
- Communicates clearly and effectively.
- Gains, develops and retains credibility about their performance.
- Implements advanced strategies for gathering, reviewing, and analysing data requirements.
Skills specific to the post:
- Strong leadership and management skills
- Strategic problem solving
- Analytical skills
- Communication skills, appropriate to the audience
- Ability to work in a multidisciplinary and multicultural environment
- Strong team-building and motivational skills
- Strong negotiating, facilitating and influencing skills
- Proficient in computer skills and use of relevant software and other applications
- Understanding of systems engineering concepts
- Possess the capabilities needed to deliver effective solutions to complex business challenges.
- The ability to conduct cost/benefit analysis
- Business case development
- Modelling techniques and methods
- Knowledge and experience of using any/all of the following would be an added value:
- SAP ERP systems
- Power BI
- Dynamics 365
- Communicate finance concepts and issues clearly to staff.
Preferred qualifications and experience
- Relevant financial and business analysis qualification
- Significant relevant experience
- Experience in Regional Finance Director level role in Humanitarian/ Development sector
- Experience in leading process re-engineering across diverse and complex organizations
- Experience in supporting a regional roll-out of an ERP platform would be an added benefit.
- Experience in managing a workstream in a large transformation programme across diverse and complex organizations
- Experience of working with supporting and influencing at leadership levels
- French language essential
How to apply
Please visit our website at https://jobs.plan-international.org/job-invite/51102/ for further information and to apply for this role.