Market View
Adaptive HR in a Dynamic World: Navigating Diversity, Jurisdiction, and the Modern Workforce
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Interview with
Marc-Olivier Blain
Human Resources Vice President Danone Africa Region
About Marc-Olivier Blain
Marc-Olivier Blain has over 30 years of experience at Danone spanning strategic HR leadership and international sales director roles. Having lived abroad extensively as an expatriate and travelled to 40+ countries, Blain brings a global mindset rooted in decentralised organisations. His HR focus on transformational rather than transactional aspects provides first hand understanding of how to holistically meet local needs when implementing corporate initiatives. Core themes in his career have been broad international exposure, conscious change leadership, and uplifting human dignity through ethical business practices.
What role does technology play in ensuring your HR strategies remain current and effective?
One of the biggest mistakes we've made in HR is falsely believing that technology alone can solve every problem or inefficiency within an organisation. At least from my experience in large corporations, we tend to make sweeping global technology choices primarily based on cost efficiencies or financial savings, without properly taking into account the human impacts or change management aspects. But you simply can't enable true transformation in HR if you haven't first sorted out the fundamentals and foundations underlying service delivery.
Elements like new hire onboarding, employee records management and compliance reporting are the standard that HR must excel at day-to-day. In an ideal world, all of that transactional infrastructure operates seamlessly in the background so that no one has to worry about it or question whether it's working properly. But that level of seamless automation and reliability requires having the right technology solutions customised to the specific organisation's needs and digital maturity level. Too often I've seen companies go all-in on some trendy but ill-fitting technology that wasn't the right solution for their culture or operational realities, resulting in low adoption and failure to deliver meaningful improvements.
It's like being on a delayed train – you don't care about the meal service or other creature comforts if the core promise of timely transportation isn't being fulfilled. Those foundational elements are essential. In the same vein, no one is going to care about flashy HR transformation initiatives if basic operations like payroll and employee record management are inaccurate or prone to failure. As the analogy goes, you have to make sure the trains run on time before trying to revolutionise the passenger experience.
How do you ensure your HR platform remains flexible and adaptive to the changing needs of your business?
I believe data and analytics hold tremendous yet untapped potential when tailored to an entity’s unique business priorities and talent strategy. But we must remain vigilant that numbers don’t eclipse relationships, which sit at the heart of any organisation. There is so much untapped potential for data and analytics to uncover organisational inefficiencies and opportunities when the system is carefully tailored to the organisation's unique structure, talent strategy and business priorities. Leadership requires data interpreted through a lens of empathy. Data reveals part of the picture, but the lived human stories remain absolutely vital.
Despite HR trend reports saying “we should, we must, we have to”, which are a bit provocative, the most important focus today is to find the right balance. The balance between providing tools and applying human analysis, so that we may distil actionable insights and storytelling to make the patterns meaningful. Leaders who become overly enamoured with data analytics risk losing sight of the personal contexts and connections shaping the day-to-day employee experience. While data reveals part of the picture, the lived human stories remain absolutely vital. Those narratives and relationships must anchor business decisions rather than getting eclipsed by models.
How does your organisation navigate the complexities of operating under multiple jurisdictions with varying localisation requirements and business processes?
Despite being quite decentralised, global corporations often centralise systems to minimise costs. Yet in my experience, imposing rigid and prescriptive solutions inevitably overlooks regional nuances in how people interface with technology and process. As I've noted, South American teams don’t react to tools the same way as Chinese teams or European teams; contexts shape user expectations. The ability to localise solutions enables global companies to take regionally developed innovations and scale them more widely once proven. But centralised systems often lack that configurability, stifling adoption and user experience.
Nuances like date formatting, naming conventions, and task flows might seem minor, but they shape first impressions and can cause friction in daily interactions. Adaptable solutions allow tailoring around those subtle regional and cultural preferences, conferring a level of control and relevance that spurs engagement. But rigid one-size-fits-all systems hamper localisation efforts essential for global HR coordination. Even small frictions around regional norms and preferences can alienate users.
How do you anticipate the future of HR management given the rapid changes in the work environment?
I provocatively suggest “the best HR is the one that doesn’t exist” conceptually. When elevated from repetitive tasks, leaders apply gifts of emotional intelligence and strategic vision. I predict HR’s future role will grow if rooted in genuine understanding of business and people. Rather than dictates, it’s about facilitating conditions allowing an organisation’s intelligence to surface. That requires trust and support from tools designed around user needs.
HR should pivot from being perceived as an administrative burden towards a more agile, strategic function integrated with key business priorities. Rather than just paperwork and policies, I envision HR growing into an invaluable asset for fostering talent development, organisational cohesion, and workplace culture that unlocks peak performance. But HR can only transform if solutions reliably automate processes so there’s capacity to be that kind of partner. Too often we see organisations contort their strategy around what existing software tools make conveniently measurable, rather than advocating for technology that can be tailored to their culture and strategic vision.
Can you share a recent challenge where having an adaptive HR approach would have been, or was crucial to delivering a successful outcome?
As an example, we were about to implement a significant change in how we organise ourselves to reach outlying cities in a particular country. We decided to implement a process that was completely designed from the bottom up. We believed that if the plan was built from region to region with the input of the people involved, and accommodating differences the plan would be much more effective. And this decision to localise and adapt was very powerful and led to amazing growth. The approach led to increased sustainability because it was owned locally.
There was a prerequisite of trust - trusting the intelligence of the organisation. And trusting the intelligence of the organisation or trusting the intelligence of the people, is for me a key cultural feature that is foundational to sustained success.
While rapid change brings uncertainty, each juncture presents opportunities to reshape systems and culture. Realising that vision starts with rapport over efficiency and empathy over data. The temptation is to grasp for seeming solidity of numbers in guiding decisions. Yet I've emphasised human relationships must anchor choices. Complexities of human psychology require leaders grounded in how people interact beyond the systems. Models have limits but human discernment is limitless when grounded in care, wisdom and sound ethics. The future of technology is providing tools to simplify and gain time for thinking, reflecting, learning. Solutions should aim to augment but not supplant that invaluable human element within HR strategy.
In what ways does your organisation address the challenges posed by a diverse and decentralised workforce?
In my view, we must always remain conscious of the human rapport and the connections, understanding that it is the relationships anchoring our organisation. Let care for people guide choices, not the reverse. Meet employees where they are, addressing needs around trust that uncertainty often obscures. Hear the voice of your internal customers - deliver simplicity and reliability to your employees. Be their anchor in turbulent waters, creating space for wisdom to guide the way forward. The strongest anchor in stormy seas is solid human relationships rooted in trust, care, and understanding. I believe that discussions like these are important for shaping the future in a more conscious, human-centric direction. That's a vision I would love to see continue to unfold.
About Danone
Founded as a yogurt company in Spain in 1919, Danone has grown into a €24 billion multinational food corporation. Headquartered in Paris with over 100,000 employees across diverse markets worldwide, Danone's portfolio spans cultured dairy, plant-based products, bottled water and early life nutrition. Guided by a "One Planet, One Health" ethos, Danone aims to encourage healthier, sustainable consumption patterns and more inclusive economic opportunities - staying true to its origins of delivering both social and business value.
