Oracle helps NRC improve refugee assistance with better talent deployment

Founded in 1946, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is a humanitarian organization that works to alleviate hardship for displaced people across 35 countries. In 2021, the NRC assisted almost 10 million people fleeing war and persecution by providing food security, education, shelter, legal assistance, camp management, water, sanitation, and hygiene.

The NRC counts on more than 15,000 employees to carry out its humanitarian efforts, which require careful resource allocation to projects often located in remote regions that are difficult to access. Yet, like many global non-governmental organizations (NGOs), it struggled with its rapidly growing and dynamic enterprise. Above all, the organization wanted a consistent human resources system with which to manage its people, their talents, and their performance. NRC relied on decentralized, spreadsheet-based processes that failed to provide a unified overview of the workforce.

The NRC ran a competitive bidding process, and after a long evaluation period, selected Oracle Cloud Human Capital Management. The organization determined that Oracle Cloud HCM would cover its core HR, recruitment, performance management, and learning requirements.

NRC was also confident in Oracle’s strategy and quality of consulting services. Oracle Consulting subsequently implemented the solution.

“We wanted to partner with the biggest and the best companies in the world on this, and with Oracle we have the right solution for us to build our future HR management on,” says Geir Olav Lisle, Deputy Secretary General and Director of Organizational Development at the Norwegian Refugee Council.

After adopting Oracle Cloud HCM, NRC reached its goal of establishing a common set of employee data, standardized HR processes, and a human capital management application to help manage and nurture employee potential.

In gaining full visibility into its talent pool, NRC can deploy workers with the right skills to areas or offices handling crisis situations—helping to save lives and rebuild futures. At the same time, NRC can recruit effectively when resources cannot be found internally, followed by smooth onboarding, learning, and career management thanks to the end-to-end employee lifecycle managed by Oracle Talent Management, part of the Oracle Cloud HCM suite of applications.

Using self-service functions, NRC employees can advertise their strongest talents and apply for postings and opportunities that contribute not only to the organization but also to their personal growth. This lays the foundation for higher satisfaction because employees have more visibility into their performance and objectives. Meanwhile, HR staffers are freed up to focus on things like talent management instead of feeling overwhelmed by mundane paperwork.

NRC’s ambition is to empower staff using Oracle Cloud HCM by promoting their skills and building greater efficiency in manpower deployed to emergencies. This will potentially bring the organization cost savings and improved resource allocation.

Oracle Cloud HCM’s unified workflow also streamlined time-consuming manual administration. In Afghanistan, where NRC workers tend to 600,000 internally displaced people, the new system delivered individualized Certificates of Employment to its 1,400 Afghan employees, enabling them and their families to apply for travel visas. In addition, Oracle Cloud HCM was integrated with NRC’s payroll application and the organization’s user authentication system.

 

NRC selected Oracle Consulting Services to provide implementation, cloud adoption services, data migration, integration services, training, and roll-out support.