HR is expected to contribute to business performance, but operational demands often leave little room for strategic work. Girmay Abrha, head of HR and organisational development at The Ultimate Insurance Broker in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, examines how HR can move beyond day-to-day demands and make people's practices work in the realities of the business.
Today, human resources is expected to contribute far beyond recruitment, employee relations and administration. Business leaders increasingly expect HR to strengthen leadership, improve workforce performance, build the right organisational culture, support transformation and contribute directly to business results.
These expectations are reasonable. An organisation’s ability to deliver its strategy depends significantly on its people, leadership and internal capabilities. However, the reality in many organisations is more complicated. Human resources professionals are expected to think strategically while dealing with urgent operational demands, limited budgets, skills gaps, resistance to change, employee concerns and management expectations. They may also be asked to introduce sophisticated systems without the resources or organisational readiness needed to implement them effectively.
This raises a fundamental question for business leaders across East Africa. How can HR genuinely become a strategic business partner when the realities of the organisation do not always support the practices we aspire to adopt?
In my view, this is not simply a human resources problem. It is a business leadership challenge. Becoming strategic requires HR to understand the business, challenge existing practices when necessary and offer practical solutions. It also requires executive management to recognise that people, organisational capability and culture are central to overall commercial performance.
Beyond compliance
My experience in an export-oriented business serving international markets gave me a practical understanding of the connection between HR, employee wellbeing and commercial results. International buyers, including major global brands, expected the business to meet demanding social and environmental standards through established policies, procedures and regular audits.
Meeting these requirements was important, but preparing documentation was only part of the challenge. The real task was ensuring that the organisation had the resources, skills and management commitment to implement the standards consistently. As an HR leader, I believed we needed to go beyond preparing documents whenever an audit was approaching. I advocated for the requirements to become part of our normal operations, engaged management on the importance of sustained implementation and made the case for allocating the budget required to support it.
I also believed that employees should genuinely understand and experience these standards. When auditors randomly selected employees for interviews, we did not want to coach them on what to say or persuade them to give particular answers. They needed to be able to speak honestly about their actual working conditions and daily practices. The objective was to establish practices that would continue because they mattered to the organisation and its employees.
We sustained the systems and employee satisfaction improved. Over the following year, our measurements showed a 30 percent increase in employee retention. This was particularly significant because recruitment and training were costly and bringing new employees up to speed required considerable investment. We also needed time to develop employees who could take on greater responsibilities and prepare for future succession needs.
This experience demonstrated that investing in people and sustaining responsible workplace practices delivers value far beyond basic compliance. It improves the employee experience, helps retain organisational knowledge and capability and reduces the recurring costs associated with recruitment and training. The value of an initiative should not be judged only by whether it has been introduced or whether an organisation meets an external requirement. It should also be assessed by what changes for employees and what those changes mean for the business.
Context matters
Global practices offer valuable lessons. Workforce planning, performance management, leadership development, organisational design, succession planning and people analytics can all help organisations improve their performance. However, a practice that works well in one company may not produce the same results in another.
Organisations across East Africa differ significantly in size, financial resources, technology, management capability, workforce skills and level of organisational maturity. An approach developed for a large multinational company requires adaptation before it can work effectively in an organisation with limited resources.
Consider a company introducing a performance management system when managers have not clearly defined their teams’ responsibilities or established consistent accountability. The organisation ends up with more forms and reports without any meaningful improvement in performance. Similarly, introducing a leadership development programme has limited impact if managers are not given opportunities to apply what they learn or if senior leaders do not demonstrate the behaviours expected of them.
The answer is to understand their purpose and determine what needs to be in place for them to work in the organisation’s particular context. The objective should be to improve its ability to deliver results and not make an organisation appear modern or sophisticated.
The balance becomes harder to maintain when day-to-day demands leave HR with little time to focus on longer-term priorities.
One of the greatest difficulties HR professionals face is finding the right balance between responding to immediate operational needs and building the capabilities the organisation will need in the future. Recruitment cannot wait indefinitely, employee concerns need attention, operational problems require solutions and managers need daily support. These are legitimate responsibilities that cannot be ignored.
The problem arises when urgent issues consume so much time that longer-term priorities are repeatedly postponed. Workforce planning becomes reactive, leadership development is delayed, performance problems continue without being addressed at their source and succession planning receives attention only when a critical employee leaves. Over time, the organisation spends more energy responding to recurring problems than preventing them.
HR must examine its own priorities and identify where better processes, stronger management capability or clearer accountability could reduce this cycle. It must also explain the business consequences of postponing important people-related decisions. However, HR cannot solve this problem alone. If every immediate operational issue takes priority over developing people and strengthening systems, strategic work will remain an aspiration. Business leaders must make deliberate choices about what matters most, what resources are available and which capabilities need to be built now to support future performance.
