When lives are on the line, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) puts boots on the ground. “Our goal is to protect and assist people who have been affected by conflict and other violence,” says Vincent Gremion, Global Workforce Planning Manager at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). While the ICRC’s needs are often immediate, building the needed staff with specific skills can take years.
Because the ICRC’s 18,000 people are spread across 90 countries, and because conditions change constantly, having the right staff-plus-skills combination is key to alleviating human suffering. That’s why the ICRC must constantly refine its workforce planning approach — which, until recently, was an offline, siloed process.
Replacing manual work with streamlined automation
ICRC began using Anaplan in its finance department in 2018, and in 2022 the organization selected the Anaplan platform to modernize workforce planning. An operational workforce planning (OWP) model was designed to anticipate upcoming vacancies and fill open positions using internal talent whenever possible.
“We do this by automatically comparing the requirements of a position with the attributes of our staff,” explains Gremion. “Anaplan workforce planning automatically matches positions with people and vice versa.” The solution was also designed to grow and support continual adjustment as people join and leave the organization.
The ICRC’s OWP solution had to be collaborative while also protecting sensitive data. “Data helps us make accurate decisions while we work in volatile environments,” Gremion explains. “Anaplan enables us to collaborate on the same data at the same time, while meeting our cybersecurity requirements.”
Agile workforce planning across the organization
With Anaplan, ICRC has replaced siloed workforce planning with a collaborative, data-driven process. “We have improved the way we think about workforce planning — anticipating our needs and acting accordingly,” says Gremion. “Using Anaplan for our workforce planning, we have reduced significantly the time spent on monitoring activities from hours to minutes.”
In addition to accelerating workforce planning, the new solution improves accuracy by replacing manual data entry with automated analysis. This has enabled the organization to extend its planning horizon. “For the first time at the ICRC, we collaborate at every level of the organization to forecast staffing requirements four years in advance,” Gremion says. “This ensures that we can anticipate shortages and address them.”
The new solution has also made the HR team more agile in a world that’s constantly changing. “With Anaplan, we are now able to address new requirements from our colleagues and staff members quickly and efficiently,” Gremion says.
With workforce planning capabilities in Anaplan, ICRC can ensure that it has people ready to respond when and where they’re needed. In the future, the organization hopes to bring that speed and efficiency to other processes. “There is an appetite for improving our planning,” Gremion concludes. “Anaplan can help us by bringing finance, workforce planning, and other stakeholders together.”
