Scaling With People Rethinking RTO, Hiring, And Culture with Nahed Khairallah
Want the truth about RTO, hybrid, and remote without the noise? We cut straight to the work: define how value is created, then choose the model that best serves it. With guest Nahed Khairallah, a veteran HR and scaling leader who’s supported 150+ companies from seven to nine figures across multiple regions, we dismantle assumptions, expose the traps leaders fall into, and lay out a practical path to better outcomes.
We start by flipping the debate. Instead of arguing over office days, we map work to value chains and ask which activities truly benefit from co-location and which thrive async. That lens reveals when hybrid can deliver leverage—and when it becomes an expensive way to sit on Zoom. We get specific: design collaboration rituals, align space and calendars to those rituals, and be transparent about why some roles are location-flexible while others must be anchored. We also unpack the perception risks of vague policies—how fairness gaps echo through morale, Glassdoor, recruiting, and even sales.
Then we tackle hiring. Nahed shares repeat failure modes: rushing when overwhelmed, redefining roles mid-search, and running inconsistent interviews that can’t compare candidates. We offer a concrete fix you can use today: gather stakeholders, define the role’s place in your value chain, set observable success criteria for 30/90/180 days, separate must-haves from teachable skills, and build a structured assessment with a work sample and shared rubric. For roles outside your lane, bring in a subject matter expert to test depth and execution so you avoid buzzword hires and shrink ramp time.
Finally, we talk culture—the compounding force most likely to make or break your growth. Culture isn’t a handoff to HR. It’s what leaders model, what they measure, and what they tolerate. Reverse a remote commitment or mandate office days without logic, and you teach the org that opinion beats evidence. Codify principles, connect them to planning and feedback, and keep decisions tied to outcomes like cycle time, quality, and revenue per head.
If you’re building fast and want your people practices to move faster, this conversation gives you a clear playbook. Subscribe, share with a founder who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest RTO or hiring myth—we’ll tackle it in a future episode.