“Get out of the HR bubble, get to know your business, be able to speak their language, and don’t be afraid to go back to your basic principles when you need to. If you can’t justify the decisions that you’re making to yourself, you won’t be able to justify them to a board of directors.” – Declan Ball, Managing Director of Al Massar Declan, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.
As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, we’ve invited some HR Leaders to share the secrets of their success.
This week, we had a great conversation with Declan Ball at Al Massar Declan, who began his HR career in Training roles for the Ministry of Education in Sudan and the British Council in Damascus and Riyadh respectively. Declan’s first Leadership role was as Manager for Learning and Development at the Saudi Telecom Company, following which he joined the Financial Services sector as a Human Resources Manager at Riyad Bank. In 1995, Declan transitioned to the role of Senior Human Resources Manager at NCB, becoming Middle East Director for Human Resources at Ernst & Young after four years there.
In 2002, Declan joined the team at Banque Saudi Fransi as Group HR Advisor/Division Head for Human Resources, transitioning to the Head of Human Resources role at Dubai Bank in 2004. In 2006, Declan joined the team at EFG-Hermes, based in Egypt, as Group Head of Human Resources. After taking on the role of Group Advisor for Human Resources at Al Khalij Commercial Bank in Qatar, Declan would later return to a Senior HR Leadership role as Human Resources Director for the Middle East at PwC.
In 2013, Declan joined the team at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank as Executive Vice President of Human Resources and Head of Organisational Effectiveness, later returning to his Consultancy capacity as Human Resources Advisor for Invest AD, also in Abu Dhabi. This was followed by a Global Human Resources Advisor role at FINCA Impact Finance, a microfinance bank headquartered in Washington DC with a network of 20 banks globally, which he carried out alongside his current role from July 2018 until June 2020, at which point he turned his attention to Al Massar Declan full-time.
Can you tell us how you got into HR and why?
I had an unusual path into HR in that I didn’t start out wanting to work in the sector. My original intention was to become a solicitor, so I undertook my Law degree, my postgraduate degree, and was on track to do my qualifying exams. Tragically, my mother died before I could, meaning I was without both parents as my father had died when I was very young.
As a result of that, I decided to take a couple of years out and travel, and then went to Sudan to work as a teacher for three years, which was a very grounding experience. After that, I was presented with an opportunity to go and do my PGCE under the British Council. I went on to teach in Syria and Saudi Arabia once I had my teaching qualification, and that was the best thing I ever did.
After that, I had to make the decision about whether to remain in the Arab world and switch professions or go back to England and become a solicitor. I ultimately chose to switch paths; I went to study Arabic in Cairo and then took on a Learning and Development role at Saudi Telecom.
After three years in that role, I decided I needed to build a career for myself and got a job in a bank as a training supervisor, which later evolved into the Human Resources Manager position—I had a real lightbulb moment in that role, because I fell in love with Financial Services.
I was fascinated by the complexity of it, enjoyed being surrounded by extraordinary professionals, and I liked that you could be open and straightforward with people. On top of that, I was drawn to the level of transformation that both that particular bank and the Arabic banking world at large were going through. Transformation within Financial Services became the hallmark of my career after that, really. I found it very stimulating, and rose up to become Head of HR within 11 years.
Thanks to the time I’d spent in the Arab world prior to starting my career, I found it easier to communicate with and think like the Arabic people than other Western consultants involved in transformation. I think that has hugely helped advance my career over the years, because rather than trying to apply Western business models to a completely different culture, I can take international models and apply them with a Middle Eastern perspective in mind.
I originally got into HR because of my ambition to build a career for myself, but it wasn’t until I worked in Jeddah with the National Commercial Bank (NCB), that my current approach to HR began to develop. At that time, NCB was the largest bank in the Middle East and also the largest privately-owned bank in the world. It was also in a dire financial condition and at risk of collapse, as Lehman Brothers did in 2008. The only solution was a radical overhaul. Headcount was reduced from 7800 to 4200 employees in 30 months and the bank was completely restructured, as part of which the discredited and bureaucratic HR Division was dissolved. No HR Division for many years and the world did not stop turning! Instead, HR functions were decentralised to the businesses. Rather than existing in different departments, I saw HR functions as being interlinked and present at all levels of the business. At that point, I began to actively work with the business in my HR practice rather than just working with a siloed HR division. In that role, I was given complete freedom, and that’s where I built my career and my practice.
Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector?
I think that the evolution of working practices and whether people will continue to work at home or not long-term is one of the biggest operational changes we’re going to be seeing.
There will also be challenges we continue to face moving forward around human capital—that is, measuring the cost of keeping people, losing people, and the act of balancing the cost-to-income ratio. That will mean organisations working with HR to look for ways to boost the efficiency of the teams and functions they are investing in as much as possible to enable them to survive.
As part of that fight to survive, I think we will also see the sustainability of business models being challenged, and HR professionals will need to work with businesses to identify what may need to be changed. At least within Financial Services, the cost-to-income ratio will be the key metric for HR moving forward, so if we can start tackling that ratio and the efficiency of our investments within our organisations, everything else will follow from that.
My approach is to see HR departments as independent businesses working with their organisations to achieve business goals rather than existing as an isolated function within a business. That drives HR teams to make sure they are managing cost and adding value in the right way. My approach in Washington DC was to get my HR team to imagine that the HR Division was a company that they themselves owned, in which they had invested their own money, to which the bank had awarded a contract with a three-month notice period and had to justify its existence every day by monetising its contributions. When we discuss things in monetary terms with executives rather than HR metrics, the value of what we do in HR becomes clearer than ever to the top-table leadership, which secures buy-in, gains trust, and justifies our existence every day.
What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career?
Every HR team should view HR practice as a continuum present across and driven by the business rather than restricting it to a centralised division of the business. In my opinion, organisations do not need centralised HR departments, and those working in HR should not be treated as subservient to other professionals.
In terms of advice for those thinking of embarking on an HR career, I would recommend taking a gap year to get out of your comfort zone, do something different, and gain a new perspective. There are a lot of people in HR who only know HR, so anything you can do to change your perspective will give you an edge. When you do get to the point of building your career, don’t just concentrate on making it an HR career—be prepared to actually work in the business. In my opinion, people who are just pure HR professionals will never have real credibility with a business.
When you are working within HR, it’s important not to surround yourself with people you agree with. Instead, surround yourself with people you disagree with to get different perspectives and avoid groupthink. You should challenge everything you think you know to be able to justify everything you do to your business, and as part of that, it’s important to surround yourself with people who will challenge you.
There was a point in my own career where I realised I was becoming too HR-centric and overly focused on buzzwords and mumbo-jumbo. Once I became Head of HR for the first time, I realised I had to leave that behind and speak the language of the others around the leadership table, because there was no reason for them to respond to my buzzwords. That meant getting straight to the point and cutting out the jargon, and I would advise anyone else to do the same. Often, people only care about what you can do for them, and you need to make that clear in their terms. Under-promise, overdeliver, and make sure everything you do is always aligned to the business.
Get out of the HR bubble, get to know your business, be able to speak their language, and don’t be afraid to go back to your basic principles when you need to. If you can’t justify the decisions you’re making to yourself, you won’t be able to justify them to a board of directors.
Above all, do not expect boards of directors to see your world through their eyes. Instead, see their world through their eyes. Start by learning the language that they understand, especially that of the Chief Financial Officer or Chief Risk Officer. Being able to talk about “return on equity” on human capital or “mitigation of human capital operational risk” will immediately connect you with them.
Declan has been working as Managing Director of Al Massar Declan on a full-time basis since June 2018, and provides management consultancy services with a specialism in human capital analysis, operational risk management, organisational development, succession planning, and performance management.
If you are interested in having a confidential conversation about your career or would like support growing your team, please get in touch today.