The Future of HR Isn't a Location Policy. It's an Equity Challenge.

Most companies answered the hybrid work question with a number: three days in, two days out. Two in, three out. Full RTO. But according to Tiago Santos, one of Spain's leading HR voices and author of a new book proposing ten concepts for the future of HR, the number was never the question.

"Hybrid work is not a location policy," Tiago told Croissant CEO Zoltan Szalas. "It is an equity challenge."

In a 40-minute conversation, the two covered why trust is the metric organizations are furthest behind on, why identical policies produce unequal experiences, what to do about the quiet isolation crisis among remote employees, and how to answer a CFO who asks for the ROI of workspace. Watch the full webinar above, or read on for the key takeaways.

Trust capital: the concept companies are furthest from

Tiago spent 15 years across HR leadership, finance, and general management. He started as a financial auditor and has run a P&L as a managing director. His book grew out of notes from more than 150 industry events and a late-night question: who decides the concepts HR talks about?

Of the ten concepts he proposes, he says organizations are furthest from the most foundational one: trust capital, the accumulated credibility, consistency, and psychological safety inside an organization. It drives engagement, collaboration, innovation, and long-term performance.

The problem is that most companies claim it while undermining it. "We say we trust you, but then you want to see them work. You want them to come to the office every day. You want to control them. And it's antagonical, because if you really trust, you cannot control."

Zoltan admitted the pull is real for CEOs: watching people walk into an office feels like productivity. "But are they really being productive? No. It just makes me feel like I'm in control."

Emotional equity: same policy, different realities

The core idea of the conversation was a concept from Tiago's book: emotional equity, recognizing that people do not experience work the same way, even under the same policy.

Two employees both have the right to work remotely. One lives alone in a quiet apartment with a proper desk and fast internet. The other shares a small flat with children and works from the kitchen table, isolated and exhausted. "Formally they have the same benefit," Tiago said. "Emotionally they live completely different realities."

That's the trap in how most companies define fairness. As Zoltan put it, when HR leaders say a policy "needs to be fair," they usually mean identical: everyone gets the same thing. Tiago argues the future of HR is a redefinition of fair: not equality (everyone gets the same), but equity (everyone gets access to equivalent conditions to do their best work).

The uncomfortable questions that follow: Do we know who has access to good working conditions? Do we know who is isolated? Do we know who is excluded from benefits because of geography?

What an emotionally equitable policy looks like in practice

You can't write 2,000 individual policies. But Tiago laid out what needs-based flexibility looks like at scale:

• Flexibility based on needs, not uniform rules. Know individual circumstances before applying policy.
• Personalized well-being support: mental health, financial well-being, and coaching, instead of one-size-fits-all.
• Manager training in emotional intelligence. Burnout and exclusion show up early to leaders who know how to look; most don't.
• Inclusive hybrid design. Remote employees need the same access to information, and the same visibility. Outstanding work that nobody sees earns fewer promotions.
• Life-stage benefits. Parents, caregivers, early-career hires, and near-retirees don't value the same things. (AI makes this hyper-customization feasible now.)
• Listening systems that go beyond the annual survey. Pulse checks, focus groups, listening sessions. Annual surveys are reactive: by the time you've interpreted the results, the unhappy people have already left.

The isolation problem is bigger than your engagement survey shows

Zoltan shared research Croissant ran on Glassdoor reviews across 15 companies: 40% of five-star reviews, written by people who love their company, still reported isolation or a negative impact from remote work.

That's the signal worth sitting with. Isolation isn't concentrated among disgruntled employees; it shows up in your happiest people, which means it's structural to distributed work, and invisible in topline engagement scores.

Tiago sees the second-class-citizen dynamic up close: his company has 300 people in a headquarters with a gym, restaurant, and massages, and distributed employees like him working from coworking spaces in other cities. His playbook for keeping remote employees whole:

• Connection and belonging first: access to good coworking spaces close to where people live. "If you don't have a company office, the selection of coworking spaces is crucial."
• Local hubs and regional meetups: quarterly in-person gatherings focused on relationships, not presentations.
• Cross-functional buddy programs, so remote employees know people beyond their own team and can co-create.
• A community budget owned by employees, not HR. Let people build the gatherings they actually want.
• Equal visibility in promotion decisions. Companies overwhelmingly promote people physically close to decision-makers. Remote employees who sense that ceiling leave, after you hired them precisely because the best talent wasn't in your city.

Answering the CFO: what's the ROI of workspace?

When Victoria from Croissant asked how HR leaders justify workspace investment when the ROI is hard to quantify, Tiago got specific. The indicators: voluntary turnover, retention of key talent (not blended retention, the roles that matter), cost avoided through lower attrition, time to hire, offer acceptance rate, and above all eNPS, the closest thing to a real-time pulse on belonging.

But his framing for the CFO conversation was the sharper takeaway: "The ROI is not just about reducing office costs. It's about increasing retention, expanding access to talent, improving employee experience, and strengthening trust capital." Focus on inputs, the conditions that let people do their best work, and the outputs follow.

AI should inform decisions. Humans should own them.

On AI, Tiago drew one line: "The question is not what AI can do. The question is what humans should never stop doing." AI can recommend, find patterns, and analyze at scale, but accountability must stay human. "The moment nobody feels responsible for a decision, we have crossed the line."

He also offered a warning HR teams will recognize: AI-driven productivity gains have a way of becoming more workload rather than more capacity for people. AI only matters if it buys back time to actually talk to and listen to your people.

The biggest mistake in flexible workspace strategy

Asked what most companies get wrong, Zoltan pointed to the day-one coverage fallacy: "We have 100 employees across 30 countries, so we need 100% coverage from day one." That instinct comes from the equality version of fairness, and it's wrong.

"It's prioritizing the individual versus the zip code," he said. A clustered, mission-critical team that needs to meet for sprint planning has different workspace needs than a happy remote employee with a great home setup. Start with who's at risk of isolation and which teams need to gather, not with pins on a map.

Where this is heading

Both guests made predictions for the HR ecosystem heading into 2027:

Zoltan: There's still no agreed-upon framework for flexible work, and RTO, in his view, is often "an incentive for CFOs to justify the spend on leases they're stuck in for 10 to 15 years." Croissant's goal is to help that framework emerge over the next two to three years. He also expects the AI craze to mature into real deployment frameworks, and policy to move toward customization: a $200 monthly benefit one employee spends on workspace and another spends on childcare.

Tiago: "The debate will no longer be office versus remote. It will be about giving employees access to the right workspace at the right moment." The future is a network of workplaces, and companies will shift from managing offices to managing employee experience across many environments. "Workspace will become an HR strategy, not a real estate strategy. The winners won't be the companies with the best offices; they'll be the ones providing the greatest flexibility, equity, and access to productive workspaces."

Croissant helps companies give distributed teams governed access to hundreds of flexible workspaces worldwide, without leases, vendor sprawl, or reimbursement chaos. Learn more at getcroissant.com.

Watch the full conversation: What does the future of HR look like in a world of hybrid and distributed work?