AAR Hospital's Wanja Kung'u makes HR a place people can walk into 

The way Wanja Kung'u describes her own office says a great deal about how she has chosen to run it. She is the head of HR at AAR Hospital, and in eighteen years across banking, insurance, an NGO and fintech before this, she has arrived at a fairly settled view of what the role is for. People do not need a reason to walk through her door, and she seems almost proud of that fact.

“I have an open-door culture. People come in; they don't need to come because they have an HR matter. They even come to check up on me: So, for me, I like just being there for employees,” she says.

That openness sits alongside a career that has demanded a much harder edge, and Wanja is candid about how far the profession has travelled to get there. When she started out in 2007, the job was still largely administrative, closer to record-keeping than strategy. Digitisation has since taken over much of that paperwork, freeing HR to become something closer to a strategic function, and Wanja has watched people from her own profession rise all the way to chief executive roles as a result.

“If you're not transformational, just getting to understand the business and supporting it, then you might struggle as an HR professional. Because so many things have now been automated or digitised, we now think about how to support the business from a transformational and strategic perspective. I've even seen HR professionals being appointed as CEOs. Paul Russo was an HR leader for so long, and now he's at KCB,” she says.

HR gets strategic

Nowhere did that more strategic, more exposed version of the job show up more clearly than during mergers and acquisitions, and Wanja's own experience of this came at Old Mutual, formed through its merger with UAP. It was there that she found herself directly responsible for managing staff through a process with real legal weight behind every decision, and it left her with a kind of fluency in employment law she has carried ever since.

“I've been deeply involved in mergers and acquisitions, especially at Old Mutual, when we went through the mergers. That experience meant learning, in detail, what the law requires before anyone can be let go. You have to understand the entire process and ensure that, by the time employees leave as part of a merger, every legal requirement has been followed. I can honestly say that experience has made me an expert. If I were handling a merger today, I would know exactly what the legal process requires and how to manage employee exits in a way that complies with the law,” she says.

Knowing the process inside out is one thing. Living through it each time is another, and it is here that Wanja's composure gives way to something more raw. She does not pretend that following the law makes the outcome any easier to sit with, particularly when the decision follows months of trying to help someone improve.

“My lowest moment is always when you have to let somebody go, especially when you've tried supporting them, even from a performance management perspective. In Kenya, you don't just let employees go; you have to follow the law and ensure due process has been observed. Even recently, we had to let someone go because of misconduct. Those situations are always the hardest part of my job,” she says.

It is against that weight that her open-door habit starts to look less like a pleasantry and more like a deliberate counterbalance, something built precisely because the harder parts of the job exist. Listening, in her view, has to come well before any attempt at a solution, and she draws a firm line between being approachable and simply being available when there is a problem to solve.

“I'm a very active listener. I learned, as an HR professional, that you have to listen to your employees before you provide solutions for them. People will tell you I'm very accessible. They don't only come when they need a solution. With an open-door policy, employees come to you at any time, when they feel vulnerable, when they're happy, or when they simply want someone to share something with. They're always there,” she says.

listening before solving

That same instinct to listen before acting was tested in a different way when Wanja moved into healthcare, a sector she had never worked in before and one with a culture entirely its own. She was headhunted into the role, and rather than lead with policy, she spent her early months simply learning the people she was there to support.

“I took a lot of time to understand healthcare, doctors, nurses and even patients, because I had never worked in the sector before. I spent time talking to people just to understand how they were. By the time I was developing the HR strategy, I had to ensure it was totally aligned to a healthcare setup,” she says. “You have to be an employee advocate and know how to strike a balance while driving the strategy.”

Away from the hospital, Wanja keeps to a rhythm that has stayed with her since childhood, and it is here that the same instinct for balance reappears in a much quieter form. 

“I listen to a lot of podcasts, whether I'm driving or cooking at home. I also enjoy taking walks, and I love swimming to keep fit. But swimming is about much more than fitness for me, it's a complete wellbeing activity. It helps me relax, and as I'm doing my laps, it's almost like a form of meditation. I find myself reflecting on the day, thinking about what went well and what I could do better tomorrow. Because I usually swim in the evenings rather than the mornings, it helps me unwind after a long day,” she adds.

She has been swimming since she was ten years old and applies a similarly simple rule to what she eats.

“I'm also passionate about fitness, so I tend to watch what I eat. I rarely eat dinner,” she says. “I'll have breakfast like a king and lunch like a prince, then dinner like a beggar. That's another principle of mine.”