How AI, hybrid models and evolving strategies will impact workplaces

Three big insights from our Future Workspaces Conference

Over 100 HR and business leaders packed out Birmingham’s eighteen Lounge to hear how artificial intelligence, hybrid working, mental health, and the skills gap will drive workplace behaviours in 2025.

Building on six years of research, and ahead of publishing our sixth Future Workspaces report with brand new data, we welcomed speakers from Microsoft, KPMG, Fasthosts and many more national and global businesses to add their own insights and experiences.

Here are the three big insights:

Environments are inextricably linked to outcomes – Steven Nathan, KPMG

Asking “if our people aren’t doing what we need them to do, do we need to change the environment?” KPMG’s Steve Nathan issued a plea to the UK’s executive teams: we must think more about workplace strategy because the data paints a problematic and sometimes contradictory picture:

• 82% of employees value a sense of community and 77% prioritise a work-life balance
• Satisfaction with co-worker interactions is falling year-on-year – 29% vs 36%
• 60% leave due to lack of development, but fewer are responding to changing skills needs
• 49% worry that AI will replace their jobs, but 70% would delegate to AI as much as possible
• And 75% of employees are already using AI, but 50% are using their own personal tools to do so.

The solution to the mismatch, Steve says, is an integrated approach workplace design covering six factors:

1. Space
2. Technology
3. Policy and process
4. Leadership
5. Ways of working
6. Employee value proposition.

Only when all six factors are considered can a working environment be optimised to address current needs and respond to future changes – without leaving people out of the equation.

And addressing artificial intelligence in particular, Steve says:

“Adaptable ‘human-centric’ organisations are using AI and technology to refocus work on what human beings can do best. This creates diverse teams that play to individual strengths, gives people meaningful work which creates a sense of belonging, and contributes to closing the UK’s productivity gap.”

There’s no going back now, but we need a new way forward – Panel discussion by Harkn, Giant Group and Fasthosts

What used to make sense – like sitting down to watch the television at the time your favourite programme aired, with no possibility of pausing, recording, or rewinding – now feels strange. We may miss the ritual and routine, but the efficiency and convenience of streaming has meant there is no going back.

This is the same with hybrid working, says Harkn’s David Bellamy. Pre-pandemic we couldn’t conceive of anything better, but now there’s no putting it back in the box. Most employees don’t want a full return.

But one reason it worked so well during Covid-19 is because colleagues had already built community, confidence, and camaraderie during their time in the office together. Recreating this for new starters, who have only ever known their co-workers in hybrid scenarios, is a new challenge that needs to be solved – says Maris Hanson from Giant Group. And equally difficult is the ability to overhear, shadow, and organically absorb skills and behaviours.

Nyssa Higgins from Fasthosts pointed out a third fundamental challenge that comes into play with the generational divide – commenting that 60% of her younger call centre workers are simply unable to work from home every day. House shares, student lets, and underprivileged households are fundamentally unsuitable for home working. Younger, and more junior, workers are disproportionately disadvantaged by remote and hybrid working.

The solution? Recognising that people want choice and autonomy in how and where they work. It’s not about forcing a return or making remote work the default – it’s about creating environments that support both wellbeing and performance. Some thrive in the energy of an office, others need quiet to focus. Some value in-person collaboration, others work best asynchronously. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work – flexibility does.

In the words of Harkn’s David Bellamy: “humans thrive when they feel heard, connected, and valued—and performance follows. Wellbeing isn’t a perk; it’s the foundation of sustainable success.”

AI isn’t a new tool for work, it’s a whole different dimension – Sarah Miller, Microsoft

Microsoft’s Sarah Miller laid out the four evolutions of office work, culminating in the AI transformation taking place today:

In the 1950s, we worked in one place, at one time. Work and home were physically and culturally delineated.

In the 2000s, the internet changed everything – but the office continued to play a central role.

In 2020, Covid-19 led us to ask where we could work from and challenged the role that the office plays.

In 2025, Generative AI landed and didn’t fit into any of the existing dimensions. Many see it as a tool, but in reality, it’s a whole new dimension where the impact on how we work could be greater than the advent of computing and the internet. The magnitude of change that comes with generative AI is immense – and there’s a whole new imperative for the labour market to get skilled up, as well as employers to embrace it.

But even with all the advent and novelty that AI will bring, Sarah explained how at minimum, it will fix three of the biggest existing challenges in the way we currently work – describing three ‘Work Supervillains’:

• The Broken Meeting – Employees are 2x more likely to struggle to do their job when they have too many meetings
• The Information Labyrinth – Employees are 2.5x more likely to spend too much time searching for information
• The Blank Page – Employees are 2.5x more likely to say they don’t have enough focus time for their projects

Generative AI, Sarah says, can fix all three: “Virtual notetaking assistants reduce the need for everybody to be in every meeting, leaving people to focus on tasks which are meaningful to both them and their business. AI-powered search removes the need to make repetitive attempts to find information, by searching intelligently at high volume in seconds. And AI content generation is now good enough to provide a starting point for most projects, that humans can improve and enhance rather than have to produce from scratch.”

This is just the beginning. Organisations will evolve from giving each person a generative AI Assistant – such as Copilot – to transforming business processes with Agents. Given the rapid pace of change, they must act quickly or risk falling behind.

For more insights from the conference, and to see new data from our sixth year of researching how the modern office is changing, sign up to receive updates of our upcoming Future Workspaces Report 2025.