Grace Gathu of Branch International and Naftal Ndege of ARP Africa Travel believe a strong people function is central to a strong business. Their experiences show why HR must grow alongside the organisation, use data while keeping the human perspective, and prepare leaders before management gaps become business problems.
Building a people function inside a fast-growing organisation is a challenge most HR leaders might face at some point in their careers. Grace Gathu, head of people and culture at Branch International, spent eight years at JamboPay progressing from HR intern to head of HR and administration as the organisation expanded. She is unequivocal about what that experience taught her.
“One of the biggest lessons I've learnt is that you cannot build a high-growth business without intentionally building a high-growth people function. Too often, organisations focus on scaling products, revenue and customers while treating HR as something that will catch up later. In reality, the people function has to grow ahead of the business, not behind it,” she says.
Naftal Ndege, group head of HR at ARP Africa Travel, arrived at Pollman's Tours and Safaris with an employee engagement score of 20 percent. Rather than reporting the figure upward, he treated it as a mandate for immediate action, refreshing performance management, tightening onboarding and strengthening training and development. Within six months the score had reached 60 percent.
“Seeing that score rise to 60% within half a year taught me that HR's credibility is built on visible, measurable change, not policy documents alone. It shaped how I have approached every HR strategy since: start with the evidence, move quickly on the fundamentals that erode trust, and let the results speak,” he says.
What data cannot tell you
Both leaders use workforce data to guide decisions and are equally clear about where it stops being useful. Grace draws a direct line between what numbers surface and the conversations that have to follow.
“Data only tells you what is happening, it rarely tells you why. An engagement survey may show declining morale, or turnover data may reveal that a particular department has a high attrition rate. Those numbers are important, but they don't tell the whole story. The real answers come from sitting down with people, listening to their experiences and understanding what's happening beneath the surface,” she says.
Naftal applies the same thinking across a regional workforce spanning Kenya and Tanzania. He uses structured listening mechanisms, including a shop-floor issue log and a standing forum for staff concerns, to keep feedback moving between teams and leadership.
“Culture, in a cross-border business, is less about a single set of values printed on a wall and more about whether people trust that the same standards of fairness and support apply to them wherever they sit in the group,” he says.
Preparing leaders, not just promoting them
Individual contributors moving into management without adequate preparation is a challenge both leaders name directly. Grace is clear about what organisations consistently get wrong as they scale.
“As organisations grow, your best individual contributors often become managers. Being good at your job doesn't automatically make you a good leader, so investing in leadership development becomes critical. HR has a huge role to play in preparing leaders, not just promoting them,” she says.
Naftal sees the consequences of that gap most sharply in hospitality, where the quality of the guest experience is determined entirely by the people delivering it.
“In this industry, our people are the product. A guest's experience of Kenya or Tanzania is really an experience of the people delivering it, so engagement, training and retention are not supporting functions, they are commercial levers,” he says.
