Dr Hazel Berrard Amuah unpacks corporate journey on Springboard

Dr Hazel Berrard Amuah is an author, a chartered insurer and a multiple award winning seasoned Human Resource professional with over 25 years of experience in the field.

Her awards include the prestigious international Number 1 Top Employer award and is recognised as one of the top 20 HR leaders in the country. She was also rewarded as the Woman HR Professional of the year 2018, the HR Practitioner of the year 2019 and the Africa HR Personality of the year 2020.

She is a fellow of the African Leadership Initiative and an inaugural fellow among 100 Africans in the Pan African ALI.

Dr Berrard Amuah is a Henley certified coach from the UK and has cross cultural certification from the USA. Her work experience across 22 countries in central and West Africa spans industries such as FMCG, Energy and the financial sector.

She loves charity work and has over the past decade been providing support for orphans, other vulnerable children and lepers through her NGO, the Reach Out and Share Foundation.

Taking her turn on the ‘engine room’ on Springboard, Your Virtual University, Dr Berrard Amuah unpacked her corporate journey, her experiences, opportunities and challenges.

She said her corporate life started at British American Tobacco Ghana in Takoradi as an intern and a national service person.

“It was a very interesting foundation and what I learnt there is what really helped me to grow my career. The discipline, the competencies, the leadership foundation, the people and the very culture of the organisation gave me a very good footing for my career,” she stated.

She later moved to TICO-CMSI for her first Head of HR job, which she said also provided her with another interesting experience in terms of taking leadership to drive a function and be part of an executive committee.

Biggest jump in career

She said she then moved to Nestle Central Africa, which was headquartered in Accra.

“Nestle was an amazing experience with 22 countries, diverse cultures and people, a full end-to-end company manufacturing and making all kinds of products from beverages, spices, baby food. Nestle has a serious eye for quality and I learnt so much there,” she noted.

She said Nestle was the biggest jump in her career and she spent almost 10 years there.

“I had varied experiences, projects, training programmes, mentorship, coaching, falling and rising. Dealing with various diversities opened my eyes to what a real world class company expects when it comes to landscape for where people should work and how they should behave,” she pointed out.

Becoming a chartered insurer

Dr Berrard Amuah said she later on moved to Old Mutual which was where she got her insurance experience.

“It was another wonderful transition. First week, first month, and my former boss told me I needed to have chartered insurance certification. When I asked why, he told me I could become general manager one day and getting that will help me.

“So I decided to do the chartered insurance certification so I did a research on it. I realised they had a local one and an advanced one so I did both of them at the same time and I was able to finish both in record time,” she explained.

Rewarding experience at Guinness Ghana

After old Mutual, she said she had a short stint with Maersk Ghana and later joined Guinness Ghana, which she described as another interesting experience.

“My experience at Guinness was particularly very rewarding because they give you a platform for you to really navigate through a very high sense of ownership as a functional head.

“If you are a director at Guinness, you learn what directorship is end to end. And at Guinness, we celebrate lives. It’s not like we are having a party every day but we encourage a very strong culture where you come to work and you are in a fun happy working environment, yet delivering on very high targets,” she explained.

After her experience with Guinness, she said she left to Danone, producers of Fan Milk, for a very brief period and transitioned to do something different.

“I am looking forward to different opportunities, wanting to leverage more on the insurance and building other proficiencies in my life,” she said.

Staying positive

On what had kept her going all these years, she said while people may have different experiences and responses to issues, what had kept her going was always staying positive.

“It’s about how you perceive your challenges and how you decide to address it, whether you allow it to pull you down or become lessons. I learnt that lessons in failure become a springboard for your next success.

“Sometimes as human institutions, there will be certain things that are not comfortable, not because of the company but the people who could be your peers, your subordinates or even line managers but if you leave a company, you should think about the opportunities and not your regrets,” she advised.

She said for the purpose of growth and moving forward, it was always better to focus on the positives more than the negatives, adding that “that is what I try to do.”

“It has not all been rosy but the positives help me to look forward to the future,” she said.

On what has helped her to get to where she is, she said “one thing that has helped me is volunteering, being curious and showing interest to take on projects and step out of my comfort zone.”

“So if you have a job description and you are doing something in particular and there are opportunities for you to work with different team members from different subsidiaries or countries, take on the challenge. You will learn so much from it,” she stated.