Director of Strategic Finance

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 this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination. And it’s girls who are most affected.

Working together with children, young people, our supporters and partners, we strive for a just world, tackling the root causes of the challenges facing girls and all vulnerable children.

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.

We have been building powerful partnerships for children for over 85 years, and are now active in more than 80 countries.

The Opportunity

In Finance, 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 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 organization more transparent, legitimate, and agile.

Our Strategic Finance Directorate will be responsible for leading and delivering the financial strategy to ensure financial sustainability for Plan International Inc. (PII) and lead on critical thinking and insight generation to support decision-making and strategic planning.

As Head of the Directorate, you will be responsible for building the function’s brand as a global partner through the provision of strategic leadership, insight generation, and effective resource allocation in budgeting and reporting processes for the finance function. You will oversee financial planning, financial performance analysis and management, and strategic and global financial modelling. The Directorate will have responsibility for management of the data and information sets and systems to create confidence across the function and wider organisation in what is being provided.

The Director will form part of the Finance Leadership Team and will own the development of the five-year Finance Strategy alongside the CFO. You will also be accountable for providing day-to-day oversight and management of the Directorate, including reporting, people management, and quality assurance responsibilities.

The Requirements

Leadership behaviours:

• Provides Strategic Leadership within the function and to the wider organisation, acting as a partner in the delivery of outcomes.
• Is customer focussed and embeds those behaviours across the Strategic Finance Directorate.
• Develops, motivates, coaches and manages the Strategic Finance Directorate team and broader finance teams at global, regional and country level.
• Promotes high performance and continuous improvement by all staff.
• Promotes innovation and ongoing learning and development of all teams within the region.
• Resilient and outcome focussed, with an ability to build those qualities in the team.
• Communicates clearly and effectively with internal and external stakeholders.
• Gains, develops and retains credibility about their performance.
• Sees the bigger picture and helps teams and leaders to develop this perspective.

Skills specific to the post:

• Demonstrable experience of transforming Financial Strategy, Planning and Insight services.
• Strong financial analysis and modelling skills, with the ability to provide insights and recommendations to support decision-making.
• Knowledge and ability to create a variety of modelling techniques and methods to support planning and analysis.
• Strong project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple projects and priorities simultaneously.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to present complex financial information in a clear and concise manner to non-financial stakeholders.
• Managing and mitigating financial and operational risk, working across teams to mitigate and manage response.
• Proficient in computer skills and use of relevant software and other applications (e.g. word processing, spreadsheets, database, internet).
• Possess the capabilities needed to deliver effective solutions to complex business challenges.
• Ability to translate strategy into delivery through plans, programmes, people and culture.
• Communication skills, tailored to the audiences with whom you will work – including external stakeholders, and global, regional, and local teams.
• Highly developed interpersonal, advocacy and communication skills to work effectively with stakeholders and bring the best out of teams.
• Possess the capabilities needed to deliver effective solutions to complex business challenges.
• Knowledge and experience of using any/all of the following would be an added value:
  • SAP ERP systems
  • Power BI
  • Dynamics 365 

Please follow this link for a full role profile; Director of Strategic Finance_Role Profile_March 2023_FINAL.docx

Location: The location of this role can be flexible where Plan International has an office* that can employ on behalf of the Global Hub and you have the pre-existing right to work and live.

Type of Role: Permanent or maximum fixed term contract available via employing entity

Reports to: Chief Financial Officer

Salary: We will be happy to disclose the salary and applicable benefits to applicants as part of this process, however, please kindly note that the salary and employment benefits will be set according to your location and therefore it is not possible to include full details here.

Closing Date: Monday 22nd May 

*Applicable locations include: Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, China, Colombia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Finland, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Korea, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the very heart of everything that Plan International stands for.

We want Plan International to reflect the diversity of the communities we work with, offering equal opportunities to everyone regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

Plan International is based on a culture of inclusivity and we strive to create a workplace environment that ensures every team, in every office, in every country, is rich in diverse people, thoughts, and ideas.

We foster an organisational culture that embraces our commitment to racial justice, gender equality, girls’ rights and inclusion.

Plan International believes that in a world where children face so many threats of harm, it is our duty to ensure that we, as an organisation, do everything we can to keep children safe. This means that we have particular responsibilities to children that we come into contact with and we must not contribute in any way to harming or placing children at risk.

A range of pre-employment checks will be undertaken in conformity with Plan International’s Safeguarding Children and Young People policy. Plan International also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. In line with this scheme we will request information from applicants previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms their understanding of these recruitment procedures.

Please note that Plan International will never send unsolicited emails requesting payment from candidates.