Rodrigo Tajonar, CHRO at Boston Globe

Show Notes

From Burnout to “Rust Out”: Boston Globe Media’s CHRO on Culture, AI, and Re‑Engaging Hybrid Teams

Summary

How do you build a high-performance culture when hybrid work frays connection and engagement?

Rodrigo Tajonar, Chief Human Resources Officer at Boston Globe Media (home to The Boston Globe, STAT, Boston.com, Globe Opinion, and Boston Magazine), unpacks two urgent challenges for people leaders: culture in a hybrid world and the rise of “rust out”—erosion of creativity and motivation—versus traditional burnout.

Rodrigo shares practical ways managers can rekindle energy and trust, including the company’s Let’s Connect program that scales leadership access and cross-team connection beyond HQ.

He also dives into AI in a newsroom: why AI should be an input (not the output), how in-house tools help reporters craft smarter headlines, and how data helps personalize subscriber engagement.

On the HR side, he outlines automating tier-one requests with an internal HR bot to free HR for strategy, and a vision for modern L&D—short, just‑in‑time, AI-assisted coaching for real moments like delivering feedback or navigating conflict.

He closes with grounded advice for HR leaders: stay humble, be friendly (not everyone’s friend), and borrow shamelessly from your network.

Timestamps

[00:40] – The Boston Globe Media footprint and Rodrigo’s CHRO remit

[02:21] – 2025 challenge #1: Culture, hybrid work, and closing the engagement gap

[05:39] – Burnout vs. “rust out”: what differs and how HR can spot each

[10:20] – Rebuilding connection: the Let’s Connect program and leadership lunches across sites

[11:46] – AI in media: input vs. output, an in-house headline tool, and data-driven subscriber engagement

[16:40] – HR automation: rolling out a tier-one HR bot to unlock strategic HR time

[19:40] – Rethinking L&D: microlearning, just-in-time guidance, and AI role‑play for tough conversations

[23:07] – Practical advice for HR leaders: humility, boundaries, and “borrow shamelessly”

Takeaways

- Diagnose “rust out” vs. burnout—address workload and wellbeing for burnout; rebuild purpose, creativity, and connection to combat rust out.

- Create intentional connection rituals (e.g., leadership lunches, cross-site meetups) to make hybrid work feel human.

- Set AI guardrails: use AI as an input for ideation and speed, not as the final source—especially in fact-checking environments.

- Automate tier-one HR requests with an internal bot to deliver fast answers and refocus HR on coaching, strategy, and culture.

- Redesign L&D for impact: short, scenario-based microlearning with AI prompts and role-play to support managers in the moment.

- Coach managers to model energy and clarity—regular check-ins, mentoring, and explicit expectations drive engagement across generations.

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Emily Fenech (00:34)
Welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Emily Fenech And today I get to chat with Rodrigo Tajonar who is the Chief Human Resources Officer at The Boston Globe. Welcome, Rodrigo.

Rodrigo Tajonar (00:46)
Thank you so much, Emily. Pleasure to be here.

Emily Fenech (00:49)
Yes, I usually start with context on the organization that my guests work for, but I'm pretty sure everybody knows what the Boston Globe is. And if you don't, you be living under a rock. But could you tell us a little bit more about the Boston Globe and just specifically more the people that you support that work there, what they're like, what the organization is like and about your role as the chief human resources officer.

Rodrigo Tajonar (01:15)
Thank you. So it'll be interesting. I think it depends on who you ask. Definitely Boston people understand Boston Globe, but hopefully we have people that are in other states that have no idea who the Boston Globe companies. So I'm excited to work and lead HR for Boston Globe Media. We're a Pulitzer Prize winning news organization that serves Boston and New England. We have other board calls that we are working.

like STAT, which supports journalism on life sciences for the US. And we started actually working in Europe as well. And we have other sites like Boston.com, Globe Opinion. And recently we acquired a magazine that is called Boston Magazine. So we focus on newspapers still, which is a big, it's an important part of our business and digital platforms. It's a great company to work for.

here

for three years and a half. Awesome people, very smart people, very dedicated and passionate. And I've learned a lot from each one of the employees in the company. Senior leaders, my managers, and I mean, talking about news, there's breakout news, I mean, pretty often. So it's not easy to manage. And I really admire everything that everyone in this company is doing.

Emily Fenech (02:17)
coming.

Yeah, that's wonderful. Thank you for giving us more detail on the Globe. As we think about, it's the end of the year as we're recording this, and I ⁓ can't stop thinking about next year, everyone's planning for next year. So what's on your mind as we look at the year ahead, as you think about the people working at the Globe, what sort of challenges are top of mind for you as we move into a new season?

Rodrigo Tajonar (02:59)
⁓ Yeah, it's interesting how time flies. We always ask ourselves, it's December. Where's the year, right? So every year time flies so fast. But I can tell you at least a couple of ones. And this is my favorite topic always, culture. There's a say that culture can eat strategy by breakfast. And I agree. Building culture in an environment where

There are still many employees working remotely, working on a hybrid model or companies that are encouraging or forcing employees to come into the office. It's not easy. The Zoom fatigue, less interaction before COVID and collaboration, it's also a challenge. Aligning the company's mission, vision and employees' values with the real world action is a challenge. So all this connects with attraction and retention and engagement.

I'm happy to share with you that recently I had the pleasure of going to the MIT H lab and I had the pleasure of knowing Dr. Joe Coughlin, who is the founder and the director of the lab. And there's a concept that he's managing that it's called rust out. What he says is as an average that one out of five workers are actually and really engaged in the workplace. Some are only going through the motion.

And some just attend and get paid and that's OK for them. But it's really not burnout. It's what he's calling erosion. It's the loss of creativity. So I think as we talk and we think about the people that come into our offices or to connect to Zoom calls, etc. I mean, ask ourselves, how many people do you really think are engaged? And when they attend to a meeting or or they are leading a project,

Are they really engaged and motivated to lead it with passion, with energy? I can give you an example. New generations want to be mentored, follow a leader, but really a passionate leader. And if that leader is not engaged, then we don't have a perfect formula for success.

Employees as an Arborel, and I put myself in that example, they want to continue progressing, right? So it's how do we continue sustaining things that make sense? But...

But we are open as a company to adjust and understand different generations and needs. So that's culture as a summary for me, that it's always a challenge and it's not easy. The other challenge for 2026, as you're asking for, is AI. I think this is on top of mind for everyone.

Emily Fenech (05:34)
No.

Rodrigo Tajonar (05:43)
AI and digital tours are evolving so fast. By the second, there are more ⁓ utilities for so many tools out there. But I think there's more that only using ChatGPT as a Google search. How do you actually stay on top of mind around what it's really the need of a company?

And in our case as a media outlet, there are many implications, just an example of fact checking, Learning, using information and ⁓ talking about AI and I can give you more examples. That's one topic that it's gonna be evolving by the second and we need to stay on top of that.

Emily Fenech (06:25)
I mean, absolutely. That's a lot. Let's unpack it a little bit. want to go back out. I want go back to the word, rest out, because, you know, what I hear is burnout all the time. know, employees are burnt out too much, mental health. That's a very real problem. But it would be interesting for me. Can we unpack burnout versus rest out? What that looks like? How HR leaders spot the difference in like, I think I know what the difference is. I'd like to hear from you.

But then what do we do about each one? Like, what's the remedy for burnout versus the remedy for rest stop?

Rodrigo Tajonar (07:01)
Yeah, so being very honest, this is recently the first time that I heard about RoastOut and I'm going to be using more what Dr. Joe is actually using. I'm not an expert in it. In burnout, I think we've been using that personally also in my house and with my family for so many years. So burnout, the way that I I see it, that I've sensed it personally as well is you work so many hours, you are not able to be as productive as you were. You are not

Emily Fenech (07:06)
him.

Okay.

Rodrigo Tajonar (07:30)
And I would say happy, right? You're not excited. You have so many personal things that you need to manage as well. If you have family or not or activities within the family or other things outside of work that eventually you are not sleeping well. And as an overall, you're not productive. And there are many implications around health that could actually impact because of burnout. Rust out is basically how you keep people engaged.

Burnout is one factor that could definitely keep people engaged or not, but rust out is more than that. And the examples that I gave, perhaps just not limited to is people connecting Zoom all the time, right?

Is that exciting? And I remember before COVID when I was in the office the whole time, walking through the hall and going to get a coffee, you connected with one person next to you. And in two seconds, perhaps you had a joke, you talk about their personal life, or you solve the matter of work in two seconds. Now is connecting with people and getting things solved and really making things happen.

It's not as easy as it was, or it's different. I wouldn't say easy necessarily, but how am I really engaged and what are the companies doing to keep people engaged as a inaugural? Well, it's a different scenario. You asked me, how are companies or inaugural doing things? What are we doing? I can tell you that. ⁓

is for burnout. mean, there are many ways, but I think the instrumental going around culture is managers understanding and connecting with their employees to understand how they are feeling, to understand if there are hiccups, to understand if there are things that they need help with from a professional tools, skills, development, but also from a personal perspective because...

I mean, you don't know what each one of our employees are actually ⁓ going through and having a connection with each one of your employees to understand that is important. And then after that, you can actually talk to HR or you can talk to the other manager on top of you, et cetera, to try to manage it and solve it. For us, you as a manager have a responsibility to keep people engaged, but you also trust the company to create programs to create.

perhaps a philosophy around engagement and asking managers once again to connect with people. think it's very important. And if they are working remotely, how can you keep them close to you as much as possible? I understand that if you're a manager living in the U.S. and you have people reporting to you in Germany, you cannot travel every other week, but there could be definitely ways that you can do things different. We in the company try, we implemented a project that I'm very happy to

share that the HR team is leading. It's called Let's Connect. It started with an idea of free food, right? I think everyone loves free food and they come and you got your doughnut or whatever, your bagel. And at least in two seconds, if you have an opportunity to introduce yourself to the next one or the person next to you, it's phenomenal. But we increased that in terms of having leadership lunches with the CEO and myself. And we're trying to meet with as many people

in the company as we can. We currently have targeted over almost 50 % of the organization in three years for leadership launches. So we give them an opportunity to ask those questions that they want.

are unasked or unresolved or unanswered. So that's one. But not only within our main offices. There are many people that are not working in your corporate offices that you need to connect with. So the Let's Connect program is extending to do something more and creating an engagement process and program among our different facilities.

I would say that's something to start with, but it's an interesting concept rushed out.

Emily Fenech (11:39)
No, it is. And it's funny how connection seems to be a shared remedy for both, right? Just listening to people and connecting. I know they look different, but it feels like if it was like a Venn diagram, I'm picturing like burnout and rest out being so related, right? You have so much to do. You're so overwhelmed that eventually you're like, what is the point of this? And your engagement just plummets, right? Like people hit that breaking point. And maybe that's where

That's where one transitions into the other, right? So, and I love the Let's Connect program at our organization. also, we're all remote, but we all, there's several people that sort of live in different little geographic clusters. And if they want to get together for coffee, for lunches, for fun, you know, our company funds that just to encourage people like where they can to just get together. Cause I mean, it's something so simple as grabbing coffee, grabbing lunch, like can help.

a certain type of person feel more connected. Yeah.

Rodrigo Tajonar (12:35)
100%.

Yeah, 100%. It's something so simple, right? That has a lot of impact.

Emily Fenech (12:42)
Mm-hmm. That's great. Well, let's get to the second challenge you mentioned, was AI. It's a doozy. AI is everywhere and it's just changing everything. You also mentioned fact checking. And I think as a media organization, you must have sort of unique challenges around AI because as I talk to HR leaders, a common theme is that we should use AI as an input, not an output, meaning

It helps you think it shouldn't do the thinking for you, right? It helps you refine. shouldn't be your source. So how have you, how do you think about that as a people leader at a media organization and how do your people think about it?

Rodrigo Tajonar (13:21)
So I can share some examples about the company and then I'll give some more around HR. you said it even better, ⁓ the fact checking in the type of our company as an input versus an output. It's important because you can actually post a story that if you only used ChatGBT to say, what did this person did in or do in 1979?

And ChatGPT will give you the information that it's in it, but it's not necessarily a fact or it's not the truth. So if we do that mistake as reporters, then we'll be in a lot of problems and trouble. So what we are currently doing is definitely there has to be policies around that.

around it that we implemented with the help of the legal department, the newsrooms and such. One interesting one is using AI as an advantage to our reporters is let's assume that you are writing a story and the story is phenomenal and you have whatever number of words within your story, but you have no idea how to write the headline.

and you want to connect, right? When you open any media outlet or website, being very honest, the first thing that you read is the headline and it needs to be attractive and connected with what, I mean, it's your desire and passions, right? So ⁓ we currently have a tool that was developed ⁓ in-house that you can actually either upload your full story

or main ideas of your story, and it gives you specific examples of headlines that you can use. And it's evolving because of the information that we've been using internally within the company so that at least we don't use the same headline twice. So that has been very helpful, at least from an idea generation, right? It doesn't mean that you need to copy and paste exactly what that tool is giving you, but it...

I've heard from reporters that it has been very helpful. The other thing is we currently in a media company, and I think this relates to many media companies. We do not only compete with other media companies, we compete with people's money, their bucket. Right. So we're currently competing around the Netflix, the Amazons, because some people is like.

I do not necessarily want to have in my directory of apps a media outlet. I want to have an entertainment app. So having said that is we need to connect with our subscribers and keep them engaged in the best possible way. How those AI will continue helping us out is understanding data, understanding what our subscribers are in the need for.

that each subscriber is different. Where can we meet them? Can we meet them halfway, full way? Can we create different verticals so that we keep them more engaged? How about our photos? How about that? You name it. So AI from a data analysis perspective has and will continue to be very helpful for us in terms of understanding the data from our subscribers. And that's, I mean, that's

a piece of gold information so that we can actually keep them as subscribers and engaged within our platforms. From an HR perspective, I'm all in favor of eliminating operational work and investing more time about how HR really can work on the strategy and connecting with employees. When you talk, when you call a or connect with a call center,

At least that's my example. I'd love to talk to a representative. Those are those people or virtual bots that are saying, hey, what's your need? And eventually you don't have the formal response. It's it's not as engaging. So I'm using that as an example for HR, HR, because I want our employees to have an HR presence as much as possible so that at least we can understand.

Emily Fenech (17:45)
Okay.

Rodrigo Tajonar (17:46)
the culture, their needs, their passions. One example is we are in the process of rolling out an internal HR bot, but it's more for the operational things that employees usually ask for. How many vacations days do I have? What's the policy for X? And even though we have information in our websites, sometimes it's not as easy perhaps to ask a bot, and that's something that we are working on.

That will help us simplify, speed up the responses to our employees, help them focus on their job, and then from an HR perspective, focus less on the operational tasks and focus more on the strategy. So a few examples around that end that I'm sure if we talk about this topic in six months from now, that will be evolving and perhaps change it from now.

Emily Fenech (18:39)
Yeah, absolutely. And most people that I talk with in HR, feels like, I'll go out on a limb and say this in 2025, if you don't, if you haven't started automating those sort of tier one requests from HR, you're really missing out because it, because you can do it and you can do it in multiple ways. can build it internally. There's apps like Kinfolk that I'm a big fan of that can help you with that. There's Zapier. They have a great HR guide for how to automate it.

There's lots of different paths that can work for your organization, but it just seems like such a great use case of exactly what AI can help us with, which is that knowledge-based function, right? I met with a woman, Kelly Morse, who's the Chief People Officer at Bullhorn. She said she gets 15,000 emails a year. I'll have to go back and check the episode.

But the majority of them are those tier one repetitive requests where, know, at first you could be afraid like, you don't want to give them that bad customer service. Press one or, you know, make them feel frustrated. But AI is really good at answering your question and answering it quickly on a very easy tier one request. You know, everybody wins, right? So I'm willing to say that 2026, if you haven't automated that piece yet, you got to make some phone calls.

Rodrigo Tajonar (19:54)
I agree.

I'm with you. You're already late.

Emily Fenech (20:03)
You're already a little bit, you're a little late. Yeah. And I know we're all getting started and we like to say nobody's late, but on that one, I'll go out there on a limb and I'll say, you gotta automate those. Anything else top of mind in terms of things you'd like to experiment with next year or things that you're excited about in terms of the future of work?

Rodrigo Tajonar (20:14)
Exactly.

⁓ so one thing that I, I would love to test different is the way that we develop and train our employees. And perhaps this connects with AI as well. So you might remember perhaps back in time, you went to some seminars or trainings through three days trainings and eventually, which was the outcome. Perhaps you might remember something the first day after it, but

Emily Fenech (20:42)
is true.

Rodrigo Tajonar (20:50)
The week after, perhaps 50 % and the month after, perhaps zero, right? And it was a lot of investment than companies used to do. ⁓ Learning and development has been evolving. I'm using TikTok as an example, And I have a ⁓ teenage daughter that, she uses TikTok for everything. But using that on the good side is how do we evolve learning and development and AI where eventually you can ask perhaps,

For example, the HR bot that we want to roll out. A, I have a situation where I need to deliver feedback and this is the situation of this employee. Then instead of just receiving a guideline, because you can actually get that from ChatGPT currently. It's good information, it's guidelines. But there are some that I'm just thinking out loud that if an AI tool can help you create material,

that in a two minute video can give you the fundamentals and perhaps play with you in terms of, look, do this, do not do that and show you how to navigate, how to set your office, how to set your screen, you name it. Something very short and sweet versus saying you need to come to the training that is going to take two hours of your time. And some people might say, it's too long. Boring. Bye. I will not go there. So

Going with culture, we need to continue training and sustaining leaders and new generations, new managers, trainings, mean, 101, et cetera, but keep sustaining their basics and fundamentals of what a manager is. And they cannot get everything from a coach or from a mentor, but I'm sure that if they have a tool that could make it way simpler and easier.

Emily Fenech (22:31)
Absolutely.

Rodrigo Tajonar (22:42)
versus always coming to HR because we don't have unlimited resources to help them out, I think that would be helpful. I'm really seeking to do things different for next year. And that's another one that how can we make managers and employees lives easier and simpler.

Emily Fenech (23:02)
Yeah, I would love to check in with you and just see what you're learning, what you're discovering, because that seems like such a great use case of, you know, we've all been to training sessions. And then again, we talked about AI as a knowledge base. I also love to think of AI as like your memory, like of helping us with our very flawed human memory. You take a course six months later, you're in the moment. It's time to sort of like put into action everything you learned in that course. I know that I won't remember it.

You know, I need something that's more in the moment, like exactly what I need when I need it. And I do love the idea of also like practicing with a neutral party. know, AI is neutral. It doesn't judge you. It's not real. And so, you know, you can maybe get some of your nerves out. Conflict is hard for people. We can pretend like it's not, or we can work around it, right? And, you know, to have someone to work out your nerves with for those,

Rodrigo Tajonar (23:42)
Exactly.

Emily Fenech (23:57)
conversations that require conflict, right? I see that as a really awesome use case. I'd love to see how that turns out for you.

Rodrigo Tajonar (24:05)
Exactly. I'll let you know. I promise.

Emily Fenech (24:08)
Okay, great. Well,

any other, I mean, we've tackled a lot, we've covered a lot of ground today, Rodrigo. Any last words of advice or encouragement for the HR folks that might be listening?

Rodrigo Tajonar (24:20)
Be humble. We don't know it all. Things are evolving so fast. And even though I'm sure that there are so many HR professionals that have been doing HR for so many years and perhaps navigating with different centers of excellence, continue learning, continue adjusting, continue listening. I know that sometimes, and I learned this within my career is I wanted to be friends with everyone, but it's impossible.

Me being a Latino is like, yeah, friends with everyone. So it's impossible. But I've learned I can be friendly and try to help them out. So that'll be my suggestion. I try to help them as much as possible. But also we have a business and a company to run and there are policies, guidelines, performance that we need to implement. So do not be shy. Test, practice, ask for help.

work with your network. There are so many people out there that have already done many things that I mean still shamelessly right so that's okay. So I can stay here for hours but perhaps short and sweet those will be my suggestions.

Emily Fenech (25:34)
Yeah. Be humble, be friendly, but remember you can't be everybody's friend. Great advice. Thank you so much, Rodrigo. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Rodrigo Tajonar (25:39)
Exactly. Yeah.

Thank you so much, Emily, you too, and happy holidays.