This CHRO says slow and steady is the way to RTO

Got a case of RTO regret? You’re not alone.

Over the summer, 80% of executives said they would have RTO’d differently had they had more data, according to a survey by workplace platform Envoy.

Paulo Pisano suspects some companies may have made the move too soon. The CHRO at Booking Holdings, parent company of travel sites Booking.com, Priceline.com, and Kayak, told HR Brew that he’s taken a slow and steady approach to RTO for his over 20,000 employees.

He shared what he thinks is missing from RTO conversation, and how HR leaders can manage unpredictability.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are your thoughts on the state of RTO?

We’re still very early in the process of truly understanding, what are the implications of the choices that companies are making, and there’s…a strong misalignment between what leaders and managers want versus what the workforce in general wants…A lot of the discussion around should we be in the office or not, it’s triggered conversations around a couple of things that were not discussed enough before.

One of the big conversations is, I can be as productive at home as I can be in the office. But what do you mean by productivity? Is it individual productivity? Is it team and company productivity? Is it short-term productivity versus long-term productivity?

The other area triggered by the hybrid/remote conversation is culture…Early in the [RTO push], you could see some companies coming out with a lot of confidence, “Now everyone’s going back to the office, so we’re going to be remote.”…Many of those organizations that started with a lot of certainty, they began flip-flopping because they got pushback from their employees…We’ve been a little bit slower and more purposeful.

What are some of the main benefits of hybrid working?

You hear a lot of the discourse of [whether] people should come back to the office or not, and sometimes it comes mainly from employees saying, “I don’t need to be at the office to be productive,” “I don’t want to spend time in [a] commute.”...It’s a lot of “I” and not a lot of“we.” I don’t think people have focused enough that there’s an element of what you want to do in an organization that links with productivity, which is culture, which happens, arguably, better when people can be together, and [not necessarily] together all the time.

How do you learn your job? Some jobs you might learn [remotely] but others, you can’t…There’s going to be more discussion, energy, and investment in…culture and ways of working and collaboration, which maybe we didn’t have the pressure to study a few years ago, and now it’s front of mind. So, if I had to pick and choose, I’d say productivity/performance and culture will be the big ones linked with the question around hybrid working.

The last few years have shown HR leaders that work can be unpredictable. What tips do you have for managing the unpredictable from your time leading Booking Holdings?

[Have] clarity on what’s predictable…Be intentional about where you’re focusing your time. And then make sure…you’re aligning your team and your structure so it can be coherent…with the choices you’re making. Where I see some of my peers messing up a bit, or even a part of my own learning process, is…[when] you’re realigning to new priorities or new demands of your job, but you haven’t looked back at how you operate, what choices you make, and what kind of team you’re building.