A Journey of Transformation
for HR Services around the globe

THE HEADLINES

Global visibility of HR service delivery from a cloud-based solution

Increased efficiency through simplified processes and automation

Flexibility to optimise service delivery model

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WHO WE ARE

The British Council is the United Kingdom’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. It promotes a broader knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language, encouraging cultural, scientific, technological, and educational co-operation with the United Kingdom.

The British Council is a charity governed by Royal Charter. It is also a public corporation and an executive non-departmental public body (NDPB), sponsored by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

With its headquarters in London, it operates through 120 legal entities in over 100 countries and employs 12,500 people. The organisation is divided into seven regions, with strategic management spanning all regions.

Government funding accounts for approximately 15% of its revenue, the bulk of income is generated by teaching activities and from running examinations.

A FRAGMENTED STRUCTURE

Like any long-established organisation (the British Council was formed in 1934), it has grown organically.The result is a highly fragmented organisational structure. The Human Resources function was no exception with local offices running recruitment, onboarding, staff learning and development activities. Recognising the need to be more efficient, the British Council made a strategic decision to transform its HR function world-wide.

The British Council is the United Kingdom’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. It promotes a broader knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language, encouraging cultural, scientific, technological, and educational co-operation with the United Kingdom.

The British Council is a charity governed by Royal Charter. It is also a public corporation and an executive non-departmental public body (NDPB), sponsored by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

With its headquarters in London, it operates through 120 legal entities in over 100 countries and employs 12,500 people. The organisation is divided into seven regions, with strategic management spanning all regions.

Government funding accounts for approximately 15% of its revenue, the bulk of income is generated by teaching activities and from running examinations.

A FRAGMENTED STRUCTURE

Like any long-established organisation (the British Council was formed in 1934), it has grown organically.The result is a highly fragmented organisational structure. The Human Resources function was no exception with local offices running recruitment, onboarding, staff learning and development activities. Recognising the need to be more efficient, the British Council made a strategic decision to transform its HR function world-wide.

RELIABLE, CONSISTENT HR PROCESSES

The HR function had to find the best way to deliver HR services, providing an efficient and consistent experience for managers, staff, and job applicants. It needed to be supported by the best processes and technology - and that meant designing reliable, consistent processes. SAP SuccessFactors was selected to support this transformation. As a first step, the Core HR operational processes were standardised, and SuccessFactors Employee Central implemented to give comprehensive organisational and employee data globally. Having completed this process largely in-house, the British Council set out to engage an implementation partner with global reach who understood our vision and culture to assist with the next stage of the journey.

ENGAGING THE RIGHT PARTNER

Three organisations were shortlisted and interviewed. “While we felt they were all technically capable, TalenTeam stood out as having the best understanding of what we were trying to achieve. Their consultants were confident enough to challenge some of our assumptions about the solution and were prepared to explore ways of making the product work for us. We felt very comfortable with the cultural fit between our organisations.” says Janet Huckvale, Programme Manager for HR transformation.

Deadlines were ridiculously tight, but TalenTeam hit the ground running, just six weeks after submitting their proposal!

THE TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY

With SuccessFactors Employee Central in place, TalenTeam focused first on realising the global vision for recruitment. Typically, the British Council had been hiring around 3000 people a year, mostly teachers and examiners, many of whom are highly mobile, requiring it to meet both local and global standards. “We needed a solution that would enable us to maximise standardisation across the recruitment process while ensuring we meet local functional requirements and regulations,” explained Janet. “We now have a streamlined process, accommodating local variances for qualification, immigration rules and cultural fit. Using the latest features of SuccessFactors, such as evergreen requisitions for high volume hiring, gives us much more control over our recruitment pipeline.”

The recruitment functionality is now fully deployed. Internal and external candidates globally are now coming through the system. Hiring managers have end-to-end visibility of what is going on with their candidates and their vacancies. Every step of the recruitment lifecycle is now transparent, and all data held is compliant with GDPR.

"We are already seeing significant benefits from automation, accessibility and consistency of processes."

- Janet

The British Council will have a single source of information to help make important business
decisions about employees, from hiring and diversity to performance and turnover.

Janet continues, “We have reduced the manual effort involved in recruitment, by pulling information from one step to the next in the process. This is helping to avoid having to re-enter data, which is both timeconsuming and prone to error.

Before, recruitment activity was limited to the vacancy location; now we can manage this from anywhere in the organisation. The system ensures we can all follow a standard process from post creation, through advertising to application processing andthough onboarding. This frees up time for managers to carry out more high-value activities around talent development.”

THE TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY

With SuccessFactors Employee Central in place, TalenTeam focused first on realising the global vision for recruitment. Typically, the British Council had been hiring around 3000 people a year, mostly teachers and examiners, many of whom are highly mobile, requiring it to meet both local and global standards. “We needed a solution that would enable us to maximise standardisation across the recruitment process while ensuring we meet local functional requirements and regulations,” explained Janet. “We now have a streamlined process, accommodating local variances for qualification, immigration rules and cultural fit. Using the latest features of SuccessFactors, such as evergreen requisitions for high volume hiring, gives us much more control over our recruitment pipeline.”

The recruitment functionality is now fully deployed. Internal and external candidates globally are now coming through the system. Hiring managers have end-to-end visibility of what is going on with their candidates and their vacancies. Every step of the recruitment lifecycle is now transparent, and all data held is compliant with GDPR.

"We are already seeing significant benefits from automation, accessibility and consistency of processes."

- Janet

The British Council will have a single source of information to help make important business
decisions about employees, from hiring and diversity to performance and turnover.

Janet continues, “We have reduced the manual effort involved in recruitment, by pulling information from one step to the next in the process. This is helping to avoid having to re-enter data, which is both timeconsuming and prone to error.

Before, recruitment activity was limited to the vacancy location; now we can manage this from anywhere in the organisation. The system ensures we can all follow a standard process from post creation, through advertising to application processing andthough onboarding. This frees up time for managers to carry out more high-value activities around talent development.”

From a technology partner perspective, TalenTeam really get what we are trying to achieve. They are able to come up with effective solutions, regardless of the requirement we present to them. They always do their homework and come to meetings with solution options, each with impacts and enefits, enabling us to steer the best path for the organisation.

NEXT STEP

With recruitment now complete, TalenTeam has moved on to support the British Council with learning and onboarding activities, with performance management due to follow. SuccessFactors Learning Management will allow a programme of learning to be developed for each employee, and mandatory training can be tracked to ensure regulatory compliance. By setting up links
to 3rd party training and pre-employment screening organisations employees will be able to book their own learning courses. SuccessFactors Performance & Goals will equip the Council with the in-depth information it needs to retain, reward, and develop its best people.

A MATURING SOLUTION

“As more elements of SuccessFactors are deployed, the benefits of having a single, consistent approach to HR across the organisation will become apparent and create a ‘pull’ from management and employees for more functionality. The success of the recruitment module is already demonstrating the possibilities for efficiency and transparency, which will be developed as further functionality is delivered,” says Janet.

FLEXIBILITY FOR THE FUTURE

Chaitali Hireker, HR Transformation Director at the British Council, is confident that the solution is helping to future-proof the organisation from an HR perspective. She says, “The implementation of SuccessFactors at the British Council has increased our efficiency and the visibility of our recruitment activities. We can now easily see who has done what, where and when in the system. Most importantly, the solution gives us the flexibility to streamline and optimise our service delivery model in the future. It is also supporting decision making, planning and governance through both the Covid response and onwards to recovery.”