Collins Mwizende Peru, group HR manager at PrideInn Hotels, Resorts and Camps, started his working life running a public phone booth in Nairobi's CBD. He was retrenched from that job by a city council lorry that swept through town overnight. The lesson he took from that empty pavement has shaped every restructuring, exit and difficult conversation he has handled since.
Collins Peru, group HR manager at PrideInn Hotels, Resorts and Camps, is a Manchester United fan. He says this without embarrassment and with full awareness of what it costs him. He has been following the club long enough to know that the current season will probably not be the one, and he has made peace with that. What he has not made peace with is the idea of giving up.
“Being a United fan has taught me more about resilience than any leadership course. You learn to stay loyal through a difficult restructuring, trust the process and believe that next season will be different,” he says.
Outside football, Collins teaches Sunday school at CITAM every week. He manages 30 children, keeps them focused through the story of Jonah, and considers it the most useful professional development he has done.
“Sunday school has made me a better HR manager. You learn patience, you learn to explain big ideas simply, and you learn that everyone behaves better when they feel seen,” he says.
He cooks, fixes things at the family farmhouse in Kajiado, and reads and writes whenever the schedule allows. He describes cooking as something he learned out of necessity after losing his mother young, six boys in the house with two options, learn or starve. Some of the early experiments, he notes, are best left out of a professional publication.
He is now group HR manager at PrideInn Hotels, Resorts and Camps, providing HR leadership across eight hotels, resorts and camps, plus Glory Safaris and Tours, Tembo Convention Centre and the soon-to-open TGI Fridays. His River Road self, he says, would be very impressed.
Lessons from a city council lorry
Collins’s route into HR took him through a Simu ya Jamii booth in Nairobi’s CBD, a mini restaurant on River Road and a bank activation tent at the East Africa School of Aviation. A Mauritian director later hired him after sitting him down and listening to him. He was retrenched from his first job by a city council lorry, which swept through town overnight and took every kiosk and booth with it without notice.
“The lesson from that occurrence has stayed with me years after. Today, whenever I handle a restructuring or an exit, I think of that empty pavement. People deserve notice, dignity and a conversation,” he says.
At Small Star Restaurant on River Road, where his official title was cashier and his real job was everything, he paid out daily wages in cash to six members of staff every evening.
“The experience taught me something no classroom had yet put into words. When you pay people their wages in cash every evening, you learn quickly that a salary is never just a number. It is rent, school fees, a sick child, a mother upcountry. The staff started bringing their problems to me, and I would present their concerns to the owners. I didn't know it had a name. It turns out it was called employee relations, and I had been practising it for free,” he recalls.
The decision and the dignity
The harder test came later when he joined Karen Country Club as an HR assistant, was promoted to HR officer within a year, and was handed a significant task alongside his boss, Jedidah Njonjo: HR had been outsourced, and they had to bring it back in-house. They built the systems, set up the office, wrote the SOPs and launched Sema Nasi, an engagement programme that gave staff a voice. Then came his first restructuring which saved the club close to Ksh 9.6 million a year.
“It was the first time I watched grown men and women break down in tears at the thought of losing their jobs. No textbook prepares you for that. It taught me that behind every headcount figure is a family, and it changed the way I have handled every difficult conversation since,” he says.
Collins learned that in employee relations, how you deliver a decision matters as much as the decision itself. The law, the process and the procedure matter enormously and are non-negotiable.
“Early in my career I thought the challenge was getting the law and the process right. But I've grown to understand that the real skill is separating the decision from the dignity. The decision may be tough and final. The way you deliver it should never be,” he says.
He carried that lesson into his six years at Muthaiga Golf Club, where he joined despite almost universal advice against the move and set about strengthening the HR function through clear policies, fair disciplinary processes and harmonised salaries. By the time he left, as the club’s longest-serving HR staff member, he had helped bring staff turnover down from 43 percent to 13 percent, a change he attributes to getting the fundamentals right and treating people fairly.
“People often ask for the secret. Honestly, there wasn't one. It was six years of doing simple things consistently. Proper policies so nobody could be hired or fired on a whim, fair pay, open communication, recognition and managers who believed in it. None of it was rocket science. We listened properly, then actually did something about what we heard,” he says.
One culture, many realities
From Muthaiga, Collins moved to Villa Rosa Kempinski in Nairobi and Olare Mara Kempinski in the Maasai Mara as cluster HR manager, his first multi-property role and his first look inside a global brand. The two properties were as different as two workplaces sharing a name can be. Nairobi staff commuted through traffic, went home at night and served corporate guests with urgent deadlines. Mara staff lived on site for weeks at a time, far from their families, with colleagues who became their neighbours and their social life.
“Same standards, local solutions. The brand standard is the same in both places, but how people meet it is not. In Nairobi, wellbeing meant a lactation room so working mothers could return with dignity. In the Mara, it meant a recreation room, because when the nearest town is miles away, a pool table and a TV count as a serious employee value proposition,” he explains.
The Kempinski years also forced Collins to think differently about time. Strategic manpower planning at a remote luxury camp means thinking in seasons, not weeks. You cannot send a replacement chef to the Mara by Friday afternoon. You plan months ahead or the season plans for you.
“Today my approach is simple, one culture, many realities. Know the standard, know the place, and above all know the people,” he says.
Collins reflects on his career as a series of moments where someone bet on him when his CV was thin. A restaurant owner who trusted a young man with his cash box. A Mauritian director named Georges Andre who hired him because he sat down and listened, then paid his first university fees at the University of Nairobi and taught him everything from editing a consultancy proposal to designing performance management systems.
“Somewhere in every hotel there is a young person earning bus fare who could one day run the place. My job is to make sure the system finds them. That is what keeps me in the profession after more than two decades. The degree, the CHRP-K, the CHRA and the certifications came along the way. But the instinct was formed on River Road, paying six people their daily wages and learning that a salary is never just a number. I have been building on that ever since,” he says
