A deepening crisis of workplace dishonesty is driving both local and foreign-owned businesses to systematically sideline Ghanaian employees in favour of foreign nationals, a transition now visible from the boardroom down to the shop floor, as trust in the Ghanaian worker reaches a breaking point, raising the risk of a structural unemployment emergency
Some foreign businesses operating in Ghana have begun recruiting management and supervisory staff directly from their home countries and other preferred jurisdictions, citing persistent losses attributed to employee theft and internal fraud.
More critically, the practice is no longer confined to large-scale or multinational operations.
Ghanaian-owned businesses, including small and medium enterprises, are replacing local shop attendants and frontline staff with foreign nationals, a development that reflects a collapse of confidence that cuts across ownership lines, business sizes, and industry sectors.
Several arrest cases in recent months, involving employees charged with theft and the misappropriation of company resources, have attracted wide media attention, reinforcing a narrative that is difficult for Human Resource (HR) professionals and policymakers to dismiss.
Job advertisements circulating in recent months have explicitly restricted applications to foreign nationals, a form of exclusionary hiring that, in a country where youth unemployment is already a structural challenge, carries consequences that extend well beyond individual enterprises.
The trend found a prominent and candid voice in Dr. Daniel McKorley, Executive Chairman of the McDan Group and one of Ghana’s most recognisable industrialists.
Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show in 2021, McKorley confirmed that sensitive management positions within his own company are staffed by foreigners, attributing the arrangement directly to his experience with Ghanaian employees, indicating that the issue has persisted for years, though it has not received sustained public attention until more recently.
“The sensitive positions are run by the foreigners,” he said, describing dishonest conduct among local staff as so pervasive that it felt “as if it is in our DNA.”
His assessment of the odds facing any employer who extends trust to Ghanaian workers was unsparing: “All I look out for in my business is to give Ghanaians opportunities, but 70% will let you down.”
The remarks, from a business leader who has publicly championed local enterprise development and whose group employs thousands across critical sectors, are not easily dismissed as anecdote.
The Chartered Institute of Human Resource Management Ghana’s CIHRM’26 conference, scheduled for 10 and 11 June at the Alisa Hotel in North Ridge, Accra, convenes under the theme “Advancing Human Resources Excellence in Ghana: Leadership, Technology, and Governance,” and arrives at precisely this moment of reckoning.
The central concern now hanging over the CIHRM’26 platform is whether the institute will dedicate deliberate and substantive time to a crisis that is no longer theoretical, one that has been building quietly in Ghana’s business community for years and is now surfacing with greater visibility in courtrooms, police dockets, and the frank public admissions of the country’s own business leaders.
Esther J.K. Attiogbe (PhD), a Senior Lecturer at the University of Professional Studies Accra, argues that a narrow focus on punishment misreads the root causes of the problem.
Drawing on Ghanaian research literature, she identifies “opportunity, capability, and internal control weaknesses” as the primary structural conditions enabling fraud and asset misappropriation, with financial pressure and employee rationalisation serving as accelerants where institutional safeguards are absent.
Attiogbe contends that organisations achieving the most durable reductions in workplace theft tend to combine “strong recruitment and screening” with “effective internal controls” and “ethical leadership”, a configuration that addresses both the motivational and structural dimensions of the problem simultaneously.
She further stresses the importance of “fair disciplinary processes” and “robust reporting mechanisms” as essential instruments for creating accountability without deepening grievance.
CIHRM, as the sole legally mandated regulator of the HR profession in Ghana, is empowered under Act 1020 to promote professional training in human resource management and regulate the practice of HR nationwide.
The institute has, in recent months, intensified its enforcement posture, indicating that standards compliance will be a more prominent feature of its agenda going forward.
When both domestic employers and the foreign investors Ghana has actively courted conclude that local labour is an unacceptable risk, the consequence is a workforce progressively locked out of its own economy.
Attiogbe frames the ultimate corrective objective in terms that go beyond compliance; sustainable workplace trust, she argues, is only achieved when organisations build environments where integrity is “expected, supported, rewarded, and consistently enforced,” a standard that demands investment in culture and governance in equal measure to any legal or disciplinary instrument.
At this stage, the responsibility rests squarely with the CIHRM’26 platform to convert growing concerns into concrete governance action, given that its decisions will have direct implications for trust and employment practices across the business community.
