HR Spotlight: Prudence Duru on Hiring Right and Keeping New Hires Engaged

Our first HR Spotlight features Prudence Duru, Talent Acquisition & Employer Branding Manager, currently leading employer branding, talent acquisition, and employee lifecycle at SecureID Limited.

Her career makes the case that people are an organisation’s most valuable investment.

At Eazipay, we believe how people are hired, onboarded, and led shapes how a business grows—which is why HR Spotlight exists: to hear how the people responsible for it actually think.

Why She Chose HR

Prudence studied Industrial Relations and Personnel Management before the field was called Human Resources. In 2013, during an internship at a government parastatal, she worked in the Employee Relations and Staff Welfare Department.

Two moments from that internship stayed with her.

The first was managing staff training, including a group sent abroad in December who came back requesting a wardrobe allowance—a request that sounded bizarre to her at the time, until she understood why it wasn’t.

The second was less lighthearted.

The organisation had no HMO in 2013, so employees covered their own health bills and brought back proof of payment for reimbursement. Before any bill was paid, Prudence had to call the hospital to confirm the employee had been treated there and spent the amount claimed, without the hospital ever disclosing the employee’s condition.

Watching how HR related to employees during that first job sparked a curiosity that became a career. She was already equipped for Talent Acquisition; she just didn’t know.

She still finds the same thing satisfying today—closing a role with someone who performs well, knowing she supported them through the entire process.

The Three Questions Prudence Asks Before Opening Any Role

Prudence’s turning point came from a mind-shift.

As an in-house recruiter, she stopped seeing recruitment as sourcing CVs and started seeing it as a business function—one that shapes who an organisation becomes.

Her scope grew from there, across employer branding, employee lifecycle, performance management, talent acquisition, and workforce planning. That shift changed what she’s responsible for—not just finding candidates, but making the company desirable to commit to, while making sure the people she hires want it just as much.

Looking at the full employee journey, from hire to exit, she asks three questions before hiring begins:

“Why is this role open? Is this the role we need right now? Should we get a senior person, or an entry-level person we train up?”

The Leadership Lesson: Reading the Room Before the Resolution

Fairness, clarity, and consistency don’t require treating everyone the same way. It requires adjusting your approach.

Early in her career at a previous company, an employee issue was escalated to HR.

While the team was still working to understand the circumstances, the employee had an outburst during the conversation. Prudence was scared and shocked, but she came to realise the employee was carrying more than she’d let on.

Their intentions were good—understand what happened, work toward a resolution, but the approach still didn’t land the way they hoped. That experience left her with a lesson she still leads by.

You have to understand where someone’s head is before you address the issue itself. It’s not about reading body language for its own sake.

It’s about creating the conditions for an honest conversation. A resolution reached before that groundwork is laid rarely holds.

What “The Right Environment” Actually Looks Like

Prudence believes most people want to do well and that they will, given the right environment, the right tools, and clarity on what they’re meant to do.

That belief is built into how she runs onboarding. Her KPI, New Hire Experience, exists to measure exactly that.

When a candidate has a month-long notice period, she sends the offer letter early and stays in close communication through the gap.

Every new hire has what they need on day one—workstation, laptop, and an assigned buddy.

New hire induction runs for three days, where they meet heads of every department and learn how their role connects to, and depends on each other.

HR then runs its own induction into company culture and values. This involvement continues through the probationary period.

The goal: new hires who know why they were hired, who to turn to when they need help, and what their KPIs are, while enjoying the experience.

“People deliver their best work when the conditions are built for it.” — Prudence Duru

Who Prudence Is Outside of HR

Outside of work, Prudence is family-oriented and enjoys the simple things—music, good food, and time with people she cares about. She’s learned to protect her 8-to-5 and leave work at work.

That boundary came from a hard lesson in exhaustion.

There was a stretch where she left the office late, went to bed late, and woke up drained—until she realised the answer was simple; she wasn’t sleeping enough.

The moment that defined her decision was leaving the office once at 10pm.

Home was close enough to make that possible, but the cost outweighed the convenience.

Since then, she has set firm boundaries around her time—evenings and weekends included. She stays curious about life, and says she discovers something new about herself every day.

The Thread Through All of It

Every answer Prudence gives points at the same thing: people do their best work when the systems around them are built with intention—the right hire, the right onboarding, the right conversation at the right moment.

That’s the same conviction behind how Eazipay approaches payroll and workforce management: the operational backbone should be handled with precision, so HR leaders like Prudence can spend their attention where it matters most—on people.