The rise of AI in workplace strategy is not about replacing human expertise. It is about amplifying it. By processing vast amounts of data quickly, AI can reveal patterns and correlations that are easy to miss in manual analysis.

When organisations struggle with hybrid work, many leaders instinctively turn to the office as the solution. If employees come back more often, the thinking goes, trust will be rebuilt, collaboration will improve, and culture will be restored. But the truth is more complicated.

For many organisations, workplace strategy is still viewed through the lens of cost. How much space do we need? How can we reduce real estate overheads? What’s the quickest way to deliver savings? These are valid questions – but they only scratch the surface of what workplace strategy can deliver.

Despite the abundance of data, many companies are struggling to make better workplace decisions. Let us tell you why.

For decades, the measure of work has been presence. The assumption was simple: if people were in the office, they must be working. Yet that assumption has always been flawed.

Organisations rarely suffer from a shortage of ideas. Yet when it comes to translating those intentions into daily reality, the energy fades.

Hybrid Work models don’t live or die at the top. They succeed or fail in the messy, everyday middle. That means team routines, collaboration patterns, informal norms, and performance feedback. In other words, the manager’s domain.

Workplace projects often start with a floorplan. But this approach begins with a limitation, not a possibility. It assumes the space is the defining factor, rather than the people who will bring it to life.

The workplace has always evolved, but the pace of change in recent years has been unprecedented. he challenge is that by the time a traditional workplace project is completed, the assumptions it was built on may already be out of date.

In many organisations, hybrid was never truly designed as a system. It was treated as a set of isolated decisions—a policy document here, a desk-booking tool there, maybe some flexible work charters thrown in. The office was reconfigured, but the underlying operations? Mostly unchanged.

Workplace strategy has always relied on numbers. Square metres per employee. Desk occupancy rates. Cost per head. These metrics have long been the currency of decision-making in corporate real estate. They are easy to measure, simple to compare, and they speak the language of budgets. Yet they also tell only part of the story.

What does it take to sustain a hybrid culture—not just as a phase or programme, but as the invisible fabric of how people work, lead and relate? Let’s break it down.