From Downsizing to Thriving: Strategic HR in a Global Context

Full Transcript

(00:02)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: The way we were recruiting was totally wrong because when we were assessing candidates, we did not integrate social norms. I remember these managers saying, okay, we have a problem. If we want to recruit leaders when we are interviewing them, we need to have them look us into the eye. How do you become a leader if you’re not able to give me a strong hand and look me into the eye? And I had to explain that that’s not respectful for an African to do that.

(00:39)
Darius Teter: Welcome to Grit & Growth from Stanford Graduate School of Business, the podcast where Africa and Asia’s intrepid entrepreneurs share their trials and triumphs with insights from Stanford faculty and global experts on how to tackle challenges and grow your business. I’m your host, Darius Teter, the executive director of Stanford Seed. We talk a lot about human resources on this podcast, and after all, what is your business without your people? Check out our past episodes on attracting and retaining talent and understanding the difference between human resource management and a human capital strategy. And I’ll give you a hint. The strategy piece is often lacking, but crucially important. We’ll include links to these past episodes in the show notes, but our guest today is another tenacious HR expert with decades of experience navigating human capital in both private and multilateral organizations.

(01:36)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: I’m Rokhaya Ndiaye. Everybody calls me Ro. I’m the CEO and founder of Ro&Partners human capital consulting firm based out of Senegal, but working internationally

(01:47)
Darius Teter: Today we’re exploring two aspects of human capital that don’t get enough attention. First, we’re going to talk about hiring and managing talent across borders. In this increasingly globalized world, the HR marketplace cares less about where you’re based, and it challenges the notion that top talent can only come from the so-called West. We’re also going to talk about the sometimes painful moments, but necessary process of downsizing your workforce. While it may seem counterintuitive, downsizing can be a strategic move that supports long-term growth. And through it all, Ro’s approach emphasizes cultural sensitivity and a break from a post-colonial mindset. Ro understands how to build sustainable teams and navigate the difficult process of downsizing. She also recognizes the emotional toll it takes, not just on those leaving, but also on those who stay behind. By balancing strategic planning with a deep sense of empathy, she ensures that both the business and its people are supported through tough transitions. So how does somebody from Senegal become a global HR executive with big companies and international organizations?

(03:03)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: I think it requires grit, right? So that’s the word I learned when I was in the US. It’s just following my passion and being always aligned with myself in terms of going for what I believe in, and I’ve been learning throughout my career and just going for where I can contribute in terms of people improvement, organizational development,

(03:30)
Darius Teter: Ro’s career has been defined by her focus on strategic HR, guiding organizations in shaping their long-term goals and then aligning their people strategy to meet those future challenges. So tell me, what is strategic HR?

(03:49)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: I love that topic. So strategic HR is HR that is supporting the organization for their future. So this is everything you do in terms of creating the stage for the organization to have the change management framework to be able to adapt to the changing ecosystem environment as well as projecting themselves in the future. So what are the HR models that you have to put in place to align with the business model that is going to take the company in the future in terms of sustainability? If you’re talking about nonprofit or profitability, what is it that you have to put in place for the organization to be still relevant as we are living in a changing time in the economy?

(04:41)
Darius Teter: So three or four years ago you decided you wanted to have more impact, you wanted to come back home to Senegal and you founded Ro&Partners. What’s the mission of Ro&Partners?

(04:52)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: So our mission statement is to unlock the potential of Africa through its people. It is important that many organizations now think of HR as a place where of course there are costs related to staff expenses, but there is investment needed for you to get return on investment about people. So for us, it is really to support organizations to understand that what is investing in people to get return and to be more sustainable or profitable as an organization. We have big clients, large private sector companies, we have SMEs, we have a multilateral organization, we have national public sector clients. So we were lucky enough from day one that we have a very diverse portfolio of clients. So that’s a great opportunity that we have, and we work in the region, and we have clients also in other regions outside Africa.

(05:53)
Darius Teter: Ro was a past participant in the Seed Transformation Program, so I have a personal interest in her strategy for growing her business. I know that many of Ro’s clients came through her personal network, which is extensive, but when it comes to reaching new international customers, how does she market Ro&Partners? What’s the value proposition she offers for those who don’t already know her?

(06:12)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: In our transformation plan, we have a marketing strategy, and this is really about actually talking about bringing big data to be able to measure the impact of investment in people, in revenue or profitability. We try to explain that investing in people, it’s not only paying salaries and we try to communicate around that.

(06:38)
Darius Teter: So are we talking about – for some of the international private clients, they have branch offices in Senegal or somewhere else in Africa. And so you’re bringing local context, local labor law, local cultural … Help me understand why they want your company to support them.

(06:56)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: Our value proposition is really about what I call “glocal,” right? The global-local perspective that we bring. So I think it’s important when it comes to human capital that we take care of context, cultural context, economic context, social norms, you name them. So what we are differentiating ourselves in the market is the fact that we have the global experience, we understand how the world works, and we really are anchored to the local context in the region because most of the people that are involved in our network, they have the regional experience in many countries, myself as well. And that is very important – that we break the pattern of replicating Western practices and then make sure that we are moving into some of the universal practices in terms of people management as well as contextualizing as much as possible whatever we are doing for people management and human capital development.

(08:10)
Darius Teter: Understanding what global clients want is crucial, but helping them adapt to local context, that’s where Ro excels. Let’s talk about the local part of the “glocal” value proposition. What does it mean to contextualize for the local context? Give me some concrete examples that I, as a manager of people, hiring people, firing people, I’m sitting in London, I’m sitting in Paris, I have a team, or I have an office in Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal. What do I not understand that I need to understand?

(08:44)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: So one of my first big jobs that made me who I am and confirmed that this is the right thing to do for me was when I was an HR manager for VINCI. So VINCI has offices in the region and they just come to realize that competition is raising and they need to review their strategy in the region. So because they are construction company, HR expenses weigh very high in the pricing when they make proposal for projects in the region. So they had to review the HR strategy. They used to send expatriates in the region. Most of the time that’s very high costs for VINCI. And at that time the CEO just said, “In Africa, we have to be Africans. It’s not only about the competition, it’s just we need to speak the language of our clients.”

(09:38)
Darius Teter: Ro’s approach to developing local leaders has helped companies like VINCI thrive by aligning their HR practices with regional realities.

(09:46)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: My first HR transformation job was to help VINCI develop a set of potential staff that will be the executive leadership of VINCI in the future. So you are building a framework that is projecting the company in the future, and the whole idea was: What is the HR framework that we can put in place to attract, retain people that are going to be leading our offices in the region? And at that time when I joined VINCI, they have tried for many years and they were not able to successfully put in place an HR framework that will help them realize their strategy in the region.

(10:26)
Darius Teter: What were they getting wrong?

(10:27)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: They were getting wrong that they didn’t understand the expectation of the people they wanted to attract into those jobs.

(10:35)
Darius Teter: In my notes, I have this question: Are expectations of employees different in these regions compared to a typical European corporate environment?

(10:43)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: It’s not different at all. It’s just that most of the time that because the leaders at the time in the company, they thought that because they’re in the region, because there’s a low cost of life, cost of living are very low in the regions, and many, many assumptions were wrong about expectation of an African who wants to take a leadership role in Africa. So the main “aha” moment was to say, look, they want the same treatment as your expatriate, but they will be less expensive because, first, you will retain them, they will stay in the region because they will join because they want to. You do not have to restart over because there is a turnover with the expatriates. What is the treatment that we will be putting in place locally to be attractive to Africans who want to go back and work in the region?

(11:39)
So we had to design a whole compensation package because I was able to bring the perspective of an African who wants to go back home, and it was very different from a Western guy who has worked and grown in France or in Paris, and that’s the “glocal” approach. The way we were recruiting was totally wrong because when we were assessing candidates, we did not integrate social norms. I remember these managers saying, okay, we have a problem. If we want to recruit leaders when we are interviewing them, we need to have them look us into the eye. How do you become a leader if you’re not able to give me a strong hand and look me into an eye? And I had to explain that that’s not respectful for an African to do that. So I think I need to write an article about the fact that local companies or multi-global companies in the regions, they don’t have the right strategy about attracting the diaspora into the regions. So they invest a lot to bring the diaspora back home, but they all go back.

(12:52)
Darius Teter: Go back to … ?

(12:53)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: Where they come from. So I have these clients from one of the African countries, and they went to college in Europe and worked in Europe more than 20 years of their career. And here is the company sending them to their home country. And this was the first time that this person was having a job in their home country and they came as a CEO of the national branch. He was missing the local context and the social norms.

(13:51)
Darius Teter: So what happens when social norms don’t apply with the compensation practice of an international company? As the global market has evolved, especially with the rise of remote work during COVID, businesses have had to face the reality that a one-size-fits-all approach to compensation just doesn’t work anymore.

(14:14)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: Some companies, they have been already working on that. So they have realized that it happens that in some business it’s an international market and some of the jobs are international roles. And they have come to realizing that I cannot have a differentiated compensation benefit if it’s not reflecting the employment market in terms of where do I recruit from my people. So when COVID came, that’s when we realized that we have one employment market, one global market, because everybody was working from home and then most companies, they realize that there are jobs that we don’t need to have the people in the office. And they started recruiting from the regions where the local compensation are cheaper than when you were recruiting from the US. So the smartest companies – we worked at the time for one of the NGOs and they were just revamping their compensation policy and there was no expatriates versus local. There was just one compensation scheme which is just responding to the NGO market. So because we have a lot of market researchers in terms of compensation and benefits that can tell you in your market what is the compensation scheme, and then you adjust to that. So the smart companies that are adjusting to this global market we are in, they’re running away from these international versus local package. It’s only about jobs. So how are you paying a job? Not how are you paying a local versus a national person, an international person.

(15:56)
Darius Teter: I have lived this same transition myself. In my first international assignment, the gulf between expatriate and local compensation was vast. The expats, myself included, we got a housing allowance, a vehicle allowance, an educational allowance, a business class ticket home, and of course a base salary that was competitive in the United States. And all of this was based on the assumption that only an expat could do that job, which was usually false 30 years ago. And it’s patently ridiculous now. In fact, with the exception of some very specialized or very senior roles, the opposite is often true. You talked about unconscious bias. I think for a long time in the past it was just assumed that the capabilities you needed were not available locally and so therefore you had to bring in those capabilities. And is that something else that Ro&Partner works on and helps companies understand?

(16:55)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: Yes.

Darius Teter: And what are the sort of big differences there?

(16:57)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: I mean the big differences coming from colonization, that’s it, Darius. Let me give you an example. In Senegal you have so many official days off. Because we are a secular country, we celebrate Christian holidays as well as Muslim holidays. So if you work for the UN, the UN picks 10 days and then say we are going to celebrate this 10 official days off, but we cannot afford to do that. But for private companies, they can’t do that, right? Because they’re under the labor law and they have to just apply the law of the country. And that is a problem. Now then if you come to countries like Senegal or the countries where the labor law is very not advanced, it’s important that as a company you looked at your ecosystem and put in place a framework that you can negotiate with the officials, which is always a better framework than the local labor law because most of the companies, they offer HR framework that are better than the labor law. But because they are very much not aware of what the local system is offering, they just go by the rules and sometimes they’re below the standards in terms of HR framework. But the difference is really coming from the fact that most of our labor law are coming from the countries that are colonizing us.

(18:26)
Darius Teter: Breaking these long-standing assumptions is key to unlocking local talent and creating more inclusive and effective teams. Throughout an entrepreneur’s journey, they’re likely to face one of the toughest aspects of running a business: downsizing. When financial difficulties hit or a project wraps up or a key client pulls their budget, you might find yourself unable to maintain your current staffing level. But how you downsize in Europe or the United States might look completely different from how this process unfolds across other cultures and labor laws.

(19:04)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: There are many, many element that comes to place when it comes to downsizing. First, it’s important that you are very clear about what you want to do. It’s not only about doing more with less, it’s about having a master plan of what might be the ripple effects of this downsizing. It’s important that you’re very clear about, okay, maybe it’s an economic challenge, economic retrenchment that’s happening, or we have financial challenges or we didn’t do the right sizing of the organization. So at some point we have to downsize. But when it comes to people, we need to understand that downsizing has a very negative impact on people, but not only the people that are leaving the organization, the people that are staying as well. So we need to just make sure that we are very transparent and have a strong communication plan and create the condition of the people that we need to stay for them to stay. So when you’re downsizing, your plans are not only about the people you’re cutting out of the organization, it’s also the people that you want to keep. As an HR framework for any organization, you need to have a plan for the future. It’s not only about managing today, it is really what talent management framework are we putting in place so that our organization has the right HR strategy for the future.

(20:37)
Darius Teter: Yeah, I think this is the difference between recruiting for a position versus recruiting capabilities.

(20:43)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: If you have a staffing plan, then you know which position is temporary needs, which position is a long term, which position is to be outsourced, which position needs a consultant, etc., etc. But that can happen only if you take time to do a strategic HR plan.

(21:03)
Darius Teter: So you’re mapping the capabilities you need against the timeline when you’ll need them. Some things are permanent, some things are time bound, and then you’re hiring with the right contractual structure within the existing labor law to address those capabilities and those needs. Like you said, some might be outsourced, some might be term-limited contracts, some might be employed at will, some might be considered permanent. And you have to consider that against what the business need is.

(21:33)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: Yes. And if you do that right, actually you can always, actually, when you talk to labor framework, in most countries in Africa, you can go to the labor inspection and negotiate agreements because as much as you are complying to the labor framework, sometimes you can negotiate if your company has union, with unions, and then you have agreements that are validated by the labor inspections, which allows you to have the flexibility that you need because of the business that you’re running.

(22:10)
Darius Teter: For listeners in the United States, think of the labor inspection agency as something like the National Labor Relations Board with responsibility for protecting workers’ rights, including the right to unionize, except in Africa it’s more hands-on – much more. So for businesses operating in different regions, labor inspections can also be a vital resource offering advice, not just audits,

(22:32)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: But that can happen only if you have a plan that you can present to the labor inspection. If you don’t, then you don’t have the rationale for having specific agreement that is going to support business flexibility when it comes to talent management. We need to build a relationship with the labor inspections because actually it’s better to go there when you don’t have an issue so they see a good face of doing the right thing. So that the day you have issues, then really they will support you. But most of us, we go to the inspection office when we are called for somebody who has filed a lawsuit or something. If you’re doing the right thing, you would never lose. But I think it’s important. I remember when I was working for a construction company in Cameroon, we had 2,000 staff across the countries for a construction project.

So it was one huge project. Our client was ExxonMobil and I was the HR manager for the project. So my best friend was the labor inspector. He would come and then we would have one week of working sessions about cases in a proactive way. So we will invite him. It’s like a mission, and this is totally legal to do that, right? And he helped me a lot because I was a junior, but very smart HR. I just graduated. I had only two years of experience coming from Paris, and I was sent to Cameroon and I said, okay, the only way I can do this is just proactively go and try to see what they would tell me. And then we had very good relationship. I had very good relationship with the labor inspector. So the day then, I mean actually if you understand the labor framework from inside out, it’s really helpful because then you’re not making mistakes like the silly mistakes that most companies will make in terms of applying the rules because it evolves and it depends how you interpret it. So the best interpretation is from the source. So you go and just make sure they help you understand how you apply the framework.

(24:38)
Darius Teter: The third thing that you mentioned that I wanted to come back to was how you communicate downsizing, restructuring, retrenching. What are some best practices for communicating the need to downsize an organization? And what are some of the mistakes that you’ve seen?

(24:53)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: I think when a company will be undertaking downsizing, you need to have a communication plan. So in your master plan, because you have an overview of what’s going to happen and when it is important that you have a plan that is aligned because you need to know where to start and where to end. So most of the time, the biggest mistake that most companies that are downsizing is they forget about the people that will be staying in the company, how the downsizing will be affecting them. That’s one mistake.

(25:27)
Darius Teter: Say more about that.

(25:29)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: The people that are staying, they have huge guilt. Why me and not them, so why me? And they feel like they’re betraying their colleagues, right? That’s one story. And then the second is they say they will be next in terms of leaving the company. They know, they will be thinking that, and they start looking for other jobs and they leave before even you realize it, right? So it’s important that, and most of the time we communicate only with the people that are leaving the organization. So we have to explain to those staying why they’re staying. And actually it should be business driven. And because if people feel like it’s unfair, then the negative impact is on them that are staying in the organization. And then you still have to deliver business, and you want your people to be engaged and motivated to deliver on the business.

(26:23)
This is also your employee brand as an organization, as you’re building a company that you want to be profitable and sustainable, you also need to manage your brand because the people leaving the organization are ambassadors of the organization and your clients are watching you. So you also need to make sure that some of the clients that are very skeptical about your downsizing, you also communicate with them about the reason of downsizing. So the ecosystem, it’s not about communicating only inside the company, it’s really, when you have your master plan, analyzing the impact of the downsizing on your ecosystem because it can affect your clients. So it is really about the equation of employee experience, client experience. So all of that needs to be analyzed and make sure that each of the impacted stakeholders gets the right communication about the downsizing.

(27:19)
Darius Teter: That is really powerful. I mean, I totally understand the piece about, for the employees who are staying, that they understand why they’re staying, but I hadn’t thought about the client. Of course, the client wants to know that you still have the capabilities to deliver on your agreements, on your business.

(27:35)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: And actually in this whole context of environment, social and governance, you have clients that really worried about people well-being in the companies that they’re working with. Your reputation is at stake if you’re not doing the right thing about people well-being in your organization. So that is also important.

(27:59)
Darius Teter: But let’s talk about how we treat the people that we are letting go. I’m assuming that there has to be a balance between compassion, doing the right thing, and the pragmatic or practical needs of the business. How do you strike that balance?

(28:15)
Rokhaya Ndiaye: You don’t want to get into a downsizing that’s going to take forever and take the energy of the organization. So the better you plan it, the easier for you to get through it as a company, because that’s not where you want your energy to go. Your energy is to keep going with the business. So this is not about being a social entrepreneur. It’s about you are a company that has people, then now you’re letting them go. You have to have a level of empathy, especially at a leadership level, just to show people that you care. It’s not that they’re leaving the organization that you don’t care because they have served the organization, and you’re doing it for the good sake of the organization as well, because it’s going to have a positive impact in your organization, especially for what I told you about your clients and the people that are staying in the organization. So having a scheme around the right severance packages, outplacement services, showing empathy, caring about employee well-being, some of the employees that you’re leaving the organization could set up business and service your organization. Having that smart approach around the downsizing, just helping your business, actually. And it’s not about just a social approach to downsizing. It’s the bright business approach to downsizing.

(29:47)
Darius Teter: Managing people is more than just an operational task. It’s about securing the right skills for your company’s growth strategy, finding people who are aligned with your values, and doing this across a variety of local cultures and laws. And since we’re talking about people, it also requires compassion even in the hardest of times. And remember to look after the people who stay, not just the ones who go. This is about doing the right thing for all your people, but also about doing the right thing for your bottom line. Your clients will notice because your staff are the face of your company. I’d like to thank Ro for sharing her insights and also for sharing her own business growth journey. And check out the show notes for other HR related episodes of Grit & Growth. Erica Amoako-Agyei and VeAnne Virgin researched and developed content for this episode. Kendra Gladych is our production coordinator, and our executive producer is Tiffany Steeves, with writing and production from Nathan Tower and sound design and mixing by Ben Crannell at Lower Street Media. Until next time, I’m Darius Teter and this has been Grit & Growth. Thank you for listening.