Building an AI-Powered, Talent-Friendly Organization

ALISON BEARD: Welcome to HBR On Leadership, case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts—hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. I’m HBR Executive Editor Alison Beard filling in for Hannah Bates.

This month, we’re highlighting some of the best interview from the 2025 HBR Leadership Summit held in April. And we’re kicking off with Trip.com CEO Jane Sun.

Trip.com has grown into one of the world’s largest online travel services with more than 400 million users. The Chinese company has seen tremendous revenue and workforce growth since Sun became chief executive in 2016.

In this conversation with HBR editor at large Adi Ignatius, Sun explains her leadership approach to scaling. From pioneering the use of AI in customer experience and internal operations to reimagining hybrid work and gender diversity, she shares how she’s steering a global company through rapid change and geopolitical uncertainty, ensuring that it’s both talent and technology friendly.

Whether you’re interested in leadership, tech, travel, or the future of work, this episode is for you. Here it is.

ADI IGNATIUS: So I want to ask, Trip.com is huge. You’ve got more than 40,000 employees. I have to ask, with a workforce of that size that’s growing so rapidly, how do you make sure that you’re recruiting top talent at every level?

JANE SUN: Yes, we started with looking for the talents with the right characteristics. So for me, integrity is always number one. Secondly, competence is number two. Hard working, number three, and curiosity, number four. These are the talents we try to recruit to our fast-growing company.

ADI IGNATIUS: And do you quantify any of that? Or is it just managers get a sense of each individual and their skills?

JANE SUN: We do. We give a written test for the candidates who are interested in working for Trip.com, and based on that, we will assign interviewers at different levels for different rounds of the interviews.

ADI IGNATIUS: Yeah, so with a big workforce like that, it must be tempting. Well, it must be tempting to apply generative AI in a number of ways. And I guess I’m curious if you think Gen AI will replace your talent. Will enhance your talent? How do you see AI and human talent mixing?

JANE SUN: We invested heavily in AI. For us, AI is enabling us to reduce the cost and increase efficiency. For example, when we receive resumes, we use AI to sort it and to match it with the job description. And when we do the first round of the interview, we use AI to do the first screening. When our employees come on board, we also provide AI trainings for basic training skills. And then for productivity, AI helped us a lot with increasing our productivity. So AI definitely is a huge support for us to increase our productivity.

ADI IGNATIUS: Yeah, I’m interested. Are most Chinese companies adopting AI so aggressively? Or is Trip.com unusual in that respect?

JANE SUN: Yeah, we use AI in many folds, not only internally, but also externally. For example, with our users interface, AI is very important for us to enhance our users interface, and the search can be much more enhanced by using AI. Secondly, our engineering can be reduced, engineering times, anywhere between 15% to 30%. And thirdly, our call center employees can also provide a much better service to our customers utilizing AI. And lastly, the content generation. For example, when we create audios, videos, AI is fully utilized in the process to increase the productivity.

ADI IGNATIUS: So we reached out to our audience before the interview to get some questions. And one of the questions directly relates to this. And that’s to what extent you’ll use AI to really personalize the customer experience.

JANE SUN: Absolutely. The AI will enable us to match customers’ needs based on their travel habits, what the destination can offer, their family requirement, and their hobby. For example, if a customer is taking their children from Shanghai to New York, if they’re flying business class or first class, we’ll recommend a five star hotel in New York. And then if they decide to stay in a Four Seasons Hotel, we’ll calculate the distance between Four Seasons with JFK, and then we’ll send a limousine services to them.

And then we will find children-friendly room times for our customers, and also a push a very nice show, Lion King, to the families for their enjoyment. So AI plays a very important role to find the right product and service which match the family’s needs during their trip.

ADI IGNATIUS: And as you experiment with AI, are you finding sometimes is there too much personalization, more than people are comfortable with?

JANE SUN: Yeah, normally, it’s based on their travel habits. And I think for our customers, their time is really valuable. We target at 50% business travelers. Another 50% are high end leisure travelers. So these people’s time is really valuable. By using AI, we’re enabling them to find the best service with the best destination. So customers are happy because they will be able to find the right product to match with a very short period of time.

ADI IGNATIUS: So I want to go back to talent now. You talked a little bit about how you hire. I’d love to hear how you– again, with a big workforce, how do you evaluate both individual employee and manager performance?

JANE SUN: We use different measurements at different levels. For example, individual performance, we use balanced scorecard, which will have many dimensions. Financial performance, personal growth, teamwork, growth. So these are evaluated on a quarterly basis. At the end of the year, their performance will be taken into consideration in whether or not they will be promoted to the next level.

Secondly, in the training center, we offer 24 hours times seven AI training based on our employees’ accomplishments, as well as the next level of their goal in their career path. And thirdly, we also have Trip.com University. In the university, there are many classes taught by different U CEOs or professors. We will use AI to sort them and also recommend the right course to our leaders, to our employees.

And fourthly, we also have self-growth career path helping tools for our employees to see what they have already achieved, what they are going to need for the next level of the advancement. For their managers, they also can use AI to monitor what their steps have been achieved, or what kind of help their staff needs. So AI empower our workforce for their career advancement, as well as the coaching skills by their managers.

ADI IGNATIUS: So it’s a competitive world out there. You have a lot of competitors. I’m interested, how do you retain talent? I guess, how do you win the war for talent? And then how do you keep people at Trip.com?

JANE SUN: I think there were three things that’s very important in order to attract and retain talents. The first one is career paths. Many of our employees, including myself, are given endless career paths, as long as they work hard. They put customers at the center of their focus. For example, our call center leader, right now, she leads a team of more than 5,000 employees. When she joined us, she just graduated from high school. She started with a call center employee and she did an excellent job. We promoted her to be a supervisor, a manager, a director. Now she is the VP who can lead such a big team. So I’m very proud of these employees for their achievement.

Secondly, I think we also create a very innovative career path for our employees. Internally, we have baby tiger programs. Our young employees are encouraged to bring their business plan to executive team members. We will give them funding. We will give them CEO, CFO and CTO. For example, I remember many years ago, one of the very young employees told us he wanted to start a train business. And we were very surprised, because you are only making $0.10 for a train ticket. But he insisted that all the young people take train to go to school, take train to return to their hometowns.

So I remember, I asked him how much investment you’re looking for. And he said, a lot. And I asked him, how much is a lot? And he told me oh, I need six people, 200,000 USD. And I asked him, how do you prove whether or not you are successful or not? And he said, please give me six months. If at the end of the six months, I can create 10,000 daily transactions for our group, you will let me keep it. Otherwise, you can shut me down.

So on the spot, we told him, deal. You got six people, 200,000 USD, six months to prove to us for this new business plan. And it only took them one month for their daily transaction to exceed 10,000 per day. And last year, they delivered almost 900 million tickets to our group, which is the largest BU in terms of volume. So we encourage our young, innovative entrepreneurs to really be an entrepreneur, creating new products for our customers. And I think that’s very important for growing our workforce and to retain our workforce.

ADI IGNATIUS: Yeah, yeah. Interesting to empower the front lines. You are known for experimenting with hybrid work. And I’d love to know your thoughts on that, why you decided to experiment. And what have you learned from your hybrid workforce?

JANE SUN: Even before Covid, we already started our A/B testing. We selected certain engineers and put them in A group versus B group. We also selected certain call center employees and have A group and B group. And the test of these groups is that the productivity is similar. However, employees’ satisfaction is increased because they don’t need to spend two hours on the road, and we can reduce emissions, also. So then we gradually roll out the hybrid model, which is very much liked by our employees.

So Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, everyone needs to be in the office, but Wednesday and Friday, they have the option to work in the office or work at home.

ADI IGNATIUS: So yeah, I read a paper about the testing before Covid, and I think it said exactly what you say, that it was successful in terms of productivity, the workers at home, but that there was a cost that people who worked from home seemed to be promoted less frequently. So it wasn’t all positive. Have you taken that into account?

JANE SUN: Yeah, so I think for the team, as we said, call center employees and the coding team, it’s very measurable. Their output is very measurable. So their managers will be able to tell whether or not these employees are as productive as the other groups. The difficult part are the employees. Their results may not be as objectively measured as call center employees and engineering team. For example, sales team or BD team. So a lot of time, they need to spend time with their customers face to face in order to help them out.

So for these teams, I think we delegate the choice with the team leaders so that they can choose the right method how to motivate their team, and what kind of method they will use, whether to have a two days option, a one-day option, or a zero-day option to work at home.

ADI IGNATIUS: So I want to re-ask this as directly as possible. So there’s some CEOs who feel that people need to be in the office five days a week, and who say they don’t think people work as hard when they’re at home. What would you say to that?

JANE SUN: It’s really on their output. For example, certain works, it’s very difficult to do at home. For example, if you are a BD team, your job is to work with your partner side by side so they feel you’re with them to support them 100%. So our focus is always deliver the best product and best service to our customers and our partners. So for engineering team, maybe staying at home, they will achieve better productivity. They will be able to release the product much faster than anybody else. So that’s the right approach for coding team.

For call center employees, their output is to serve our customers around the world. Whether they take a phone call at their home or take a phone call in the call center, it’s the same. So it’s their choice, as well. But if you need to close a deal, if your partner needs you to be there, then all of us need to be with our customers in their office at the right time. So it’s very much driven by our customers’ and our partners’ needs.

ADI IGNATIUS: So I think everyone in business right now is dealing with hyper uncertainty based partly on technology– and we’ve talked about AI– but also on political, geopolitical complexity, uncertainty. And I have to ask, the tensions between the U.S. and China are high right now. And how does that affect your business? Do you have to prepare different scenarios for how things play out?

JANE SUN: Yeah, lots of investors always ask me what keeps me awake in the evening. And I feel for the things we can forecast and we can control, our team always execute very well. But there are two things we have no control. The first one is God. The second one is government. So God and the government are the two things in financial terms that are extraordinary items.

However, after Covid, I think our team really understand our value. Our value is customer first, partner second, Trip.com the first. So I remember during Covid when the border closes, millions of customers already give us the money to submit to the airlines and hotels. And all of a sudden, airlines and hotels cannot be accessed, but they demand a refund. So our executive teams had a very quick phone call. Although we already give our customers’ money to the airlines, to the hotels, now because of the border is closed, because of this disaster, we cannot let the customers to travel as they originally planned.

So we made a decision very quickly. We need to borrow money from the banks to advance the refund to the customers. So cumulatively, we borrowed almost 20 billion RMB to refund to our customers. So now business is back. Everyone wants to do business with us. The second thing is, our partners second. We remember our partner was running very short of cash. So we established a partnership fund for two billion to help them with their cash flow.

So now, business is back. All of our business partners become a very strong supporter for our business. And the third one is, Trip.com the third. As you know, we have almost 40,000 employees. Every employees have a family behind them. So during Covid, our revenue was almost zero. So I told our chairman that we really need our team to preserve the very precious cash in order for us to survive this storm. So two of us volunteered to our board that we’ll take zero salary until industry recovered.

And our VP echoed with us. They volunteered to take 50% cut until industry recovered. And our employee volunteer to the board. They will work five days and take four days pay, and some of them take three days pay. So that spirit enabled us to weather the storm together. So now we have different unexpected events. We have earthquake in Nepal, in Thailand, we have tsunami in Japan, we have trade wars.

But I believe after three very difficult years of Covid, our team are very well prepared to handle any obstacles. I think we should always focus on our customer first, focus on our partners needs, focus on how to lead our team, unite our team to weather any storms.

ADI IGNATIUS: Yeah, well that’s a good answer. God and government. Beware of the tsunami in Washington. I have to ask, you’re relatively rare as a female CEO in the tech industry. You’ve been that in Silicon Valley. You’ve been that in China. Do you continue to face obstacles? And do you have advice for women who have similar ambitions?

JANE SUN: Yes. As a woman employee, you have lots of invisible obstacles. To give you an example, when I first returned from the Silicon Valley to Asia, we were doing some visits with the executives in the other countries. And when our chairman went into the conference room, everybody was very polite to him. And then another following team, everybody showed their respect, and I was ranked number three in our team. When I walked in, they just turned around and walked away because they thought I might be their secretary.

But even as a secretary, you should shake your hand. But I don’t think they intentionally to hurt anybody’s feelings. So afterwards, when we sit down and when we made our introduction, they were very surprised when I told them I’m the CFO of the company, because in Asia, there were very few women executives in the market. So you really have to stand up and think about what we can do as executives when young women employee rise in their organization.

So as an executive, we should pave the way to empower our women employees. So in Trip.com, we do a lot of work to support our women employees. For example, when our women employees get pregnant, we offer free taxi to bring them to work and take them home. When they give birth to the babies, we give them 10,000 per year consecutively for five years, and we commit 1 billion to support our employees, which have young families.

And I’m also looking at very high, talented woman leaders. Some of them got their PhDs. After they get their degrees, they are already at the age of 27 or 28. And their doctors told them that after age 35, their pregnancy will be classified as high-risk pregnancy. So we are only giving them three years or seven years to build a family, have children, and build a career, which is much, much shorter than male employees.

So we thought about how we can better support these highly talented women employees, and we come up with a policy that, if our women employees would like to use high technology to have their eggs frozen, our company will pay for it. We are the first company who adopted this policy. So as a result, more than 50% of our workforce are women. More than 40% of the middle managers are women, and more than one third of the executives are women.

And I still think there are a lot yet to be done. So I hope I can work with global leaders and pave the way for our women employees and women leaders in the future.

ADI IGNATIUS: Yeah, very interesting. How then do you think about other types of diversity within the workforce?

JANE SUN: Other types of diversity, we’re very merit driven. So as long as our employees works hard, demonstrate their competence, show their diligence, and are very curious about learning new things, supporting our customers, we give them a very good career path for them to grow.

ADI IGNATIUS: So I want to turn to another audience question, and this is from somebody who’s interested in how you think about new product rollout. And so this person cites the book, The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki, who says, “You should look back and be embarrassed by the first iteration of your product.” But of course, you want it to be perfect before it rolls out. So how do you think about that? How do you balance whether to roll out quickly or wait until the value is clearly demonstrated?

JANE SUN: Yeah, we normally have A/B testing before we release any products. So the beta testing internally, we have some volumes on the site to see if there’s bugs or what kind of layout and designs are well liked by the customer before we do the official release. And we’ll release quite frequently. Almost bi-weekly, we have product to release by different reviews. So internet enables us to do more frequent product release than the traditional software release.

ADI IGNATIUS: So just for fun, what does your industry look like? What will your industry look like in 10 years when AI is fully adopted, where there’s an enormous amount of, let’s say, personalization or anything else? How will technology and other things reshape your industry?

JANE SUN: We are very excited by the prospects of the travel industry, because AI will enable us to increase productivity significantly. So in the future, maybe we only need to work four days a week, or even three days a week. So a lot of work probably can be done by AI agents, for example, cleaning the house, washing clothes, that when you want to travel, I think the real person wants to travel. So we foresee people will have more leisure time, more travel time. We just need to make sure we have the best service and best products for our customers when that time comes.

ADI IGNATIUS: All right, Jane, it was a great conversation. I want to thank you from HBR for being part of the Leadership Summit. Thank you.

JANE SUN: Thank you very much for having me.

ALISON BEARD: That was Trip.com CEO Jane Sun in conversation with Adi Ignatius at the 2025 HBR Leadership Summit.

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This episode was produced by Dave Di Ulio, Elie Honein, Curt Nickisch, and me. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Julia Butler, Scott LaPierre, Simona Sparane, Maureen Hoch, Amy Poftak, Alex Kephart, Rob Eckhardt, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.