“HR today is about driving performance and retaining the talent that moves the needle”- HumanManager’s Udo Ngele

For decades, the human resources department (HR) in most African companies followed a familiar, stagnant pattern: a dusty corner office reserved for filing leave forms, processing payroll, and enforcing rigid 8-to-5 clock-ins. But according to Udo Egbichi Ngele, that transactional mindset is no longer just outdated; it is a terminal business risk.

“It is a case of either you evolve, or you die,” Ngele, an enterprise HR tech & workforce management systems veteran, and managing director at HumanManager Limited (a subsidiary of SystemSpecs Group), says.

Speaking as someone who has watched the continent’s digital transformation from the front row, Ngele argues that the tipping point has arrived. The catalyst? A volatile cocktail of generational shifts, a post-pandemic craving for flexibility, and the relentless march of artificial intelligence.

For many founders, HR has long been viewed as a cost centre, a necessary evil that drains revenue rather than generating it. Ngele, however, likens a company’s workforce to any other high-yield asset. In his view, if you aren’t measuring the return on investment (ROI) of your people, you aren’t actually running a business; you’re just managing a payroll.

“Most business leaders are coming from a history of what was in the beginning, so shall it be forever,” Ngele notes with a wry smile.

“Look at startups like Moniepoint and OPay. They have not revolutionised financial systems, but how we work by rethinking how they deploy human capital. They use talent where it’s most focused and machines where they belong.”

This shift from transactional to strategic HR is most visible in the metrics. Gone are the days when a successful HR department was one that simply stayed compliant. Today, the focus has shifted to Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and granular performance data.

Udo Egbichi Ngele

In a world where your best engineer might be coding from a beach in Zanzibar or a flat in London, traditional oversight is dead.

“The only way you know they are working is to put tools in place to measure performance,” Ngele explains. “The core of HR is no longer about leave; it’s about how you drive performance and retain the talent that moves the needle.”

How to compete for the African talent

If the generational shift is one challenge, the global labour market is another. Africa’s tech professionals now operate in a borderless employment space. Remote work allows engineers in Lagos, Nairobi, or Accra to work for companies in Silicon Valley or Berlin without leaving home.

Bridging the gap between a Boomer executive and a Gen Z developer requires more than just a Slack channel; it requires a total overhaul of organisational culture. The new generation prioritises purpose, flexibility, and immediate impact over 30-year pension plans.

“We need to be bold enough to know when to retire the old ways,” Ngele asserts. “In some industries, the retirement age shouldn’t be 60. It should happen at 45 or 50.”

For the CEO still stuck in the transactional mud, Ngele offers one piece of actionable advice: Stop looking at people as tools and start seeing them as evolving resources. Continuously invest in them to improve their capacity for better productivity.

For local businesses, this has created a brutal wage imbalance.

“If you pay someone ₦500,000 locally, that’s less than $300,” Ngele notes. “But the same role abroad might earn $2,000.”

That gap has fuelled the “Japa” phenomenon, a wave of skilled workers leaving for overseas opportunities. This trend has intensified the competition for experienced developers, engineers, and product specialists. Rather than resisting this reality, Ngele believes companies must adapt creatively, choosing pragmatism over sentimentality.

To survive the brain drain, African businesses must rethink their employee value proposition (EVP). This includes creating “deliberate redundancy”, ensuring that no single individual holds the “keys to the kingdom” so the organisation doesn’t bleed out when a key team member leaves.

Ngele also suggests maintaining relationships with departing employees. Some companies now retain former staff in contract or advisory roles, preserving institutional knowledge even after they relocate. Another tactic involves building talent pipelines early:

“You need to catch them young. Groom them while they are still in school or just graduating.”

Also read: How OPay is rewriting fintech customer service through deliberate product architecture

The intelligence revolution in HR

If people are the new infrastructure of modern companies, technology is the tool that makes that infrastructure manageable. The next generation of HR platforms is evolving far beyond payroll automation; they are becoming intelligent systems capable of analysing workforce behaviour and predicting risks.

Through platforms like HumanManager, organisations are increasingly able to integrate payroll, compliance, performance management, and workforce analytics into a single operational layer, allowing leaders to move beyond administrative HR toward data-driven people management.

Udo Egbichi Ngele

“When people are working from home, you cannot watch them,” Ngele explains. “The only way you know they are working is through tools that measure performance.”

Advanced analytics can now detect early signs of employee dissatisfaction. Patterns in performance data, internal feedback, or exit interviews can reveal why staff leave, helping leaders intervene before the next resignation arrives.

Some platforms are even embedding AI to identify retention risks and recommend interventions, ranging from targeted training to compensation adjustments. It represents a profound shift: rather than reacting to problems, organisations are beginning to anticipate them.

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