Sun Ray Scheme: Building leadership capabilities in the social service sector
Publication Type
Case
Publication Date
9-2019
Abstract
It was March 2019, and Fermin Diez, Deputy CEO of the National Council of Social Service (NCSS), ran the Sun Ray scheme that had been launched in 2014 to mitigate manpower issues due to pay disparity and lack of career progression in the social service sector. Singapore’s heretofore prosperity did not result in an even distribution of wealth, and with the changing demographics, Social Service Agencies (SSAs) required assistance in identifying and improving various programmes to support vulnerable groups. The government had recently announced plans to provide more support with the goal of building a more caring and compassionate society.
NCSS had administered several leadership programmes to develop human capital and support organisations in the sector to strengthen the local social service ecosystem. However, the previous leadership programmes introduced experienced limited success due to low participation rates and the heavy workloads of staff in the social service sector. The newer Sun Ray scheme would instead centrally hire potential social service leaders under the NCSS payroll and second them out to SSAs. In return, the SSAs were required to pay a subsidised secondment fee to NCSS. This way, individual SSAs would benefit from good leaders at subsidised salaries while the impact of each Sun Rayz would not be limited to any particular SSA. Diez knew that the scheme had been successful, but sought to make improvements.
This case allows students to analyse the problems faced in providing social welfare from the sector perspective. Students will learn about how the operations of SSAs differ from private, for-profit organisations, the importance of developing human capital and the role of leadership in mitigating the challenges faced by the social service sector.
Keyword(s)
Social service sector, Leadership, Human capital, Organisational transformations
Discipline
Leadership Studies | Organization Development
Data Source
Field Research
Industry
Social advocacy organizations
Geographic Coverage
Singapore
Temporal Coverage
2019
Education Level
Executive Education; Postgraduate; Undergraduate
Publisher
Singapore Management University
Case ID
SMU-19-0016
Additional URL
https://cmp.smu.edu.sg/case/4136
Comments
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