Organisations are at an inflection point — facing unprecedented change, AI acceleration, talent pressure and hybrid complexity. In this sharp opening session, Hardy shares global examples of institutions redefining how work drives performance. Featuring insights from landmark headquarters including Macquarie Group in Sydney and JPMorgan Chase in New York, he explores what these buildings signal about leadership, culture and competitive advantage.

From AI-enabled environments to data-led design, this session cuts through hype to reveal what’s working, what’s failing and what’s scaling in the next-generation workplace.

Expect global comparisons, unfiltered insight, and clear signals on what the next-generation workplace will demand from leaders.

This session explores how continuous user feedback is reshaping the way organisations design, operate, and evolve their workplaces. Drawing on her research and her work as founder of spatio.AI, Victoria Davalos explains why traditional post-occupancy evaluations often struggle to influence design decisions, and how continuous feedback makes spatial quality and use measurable, actionable, and comparable over time. Together with Heike Sander, project lead at Crespel & Deiters, the session bridges theory and practice. Heike shares what it means to implement continuous feedback in a real organisational context: what changed, what surprised them, and how occupant insight began to inform decisions and long-term workplace strategy. The result is a human-centred alternative to sensor-only workplace intelligence: grounded, actionable, and scalable.

AI is no longer a system employees log into - it’s becoming an active teammate. In workplace and facility operations, agentic AI is moving beyond dashboards to take action, coordinate workflows, and intervene only when human judgment is needed. This session explores what it truly means to treat AI agents as new joiners from day one. Drawing on real enterprise deployments, Elisa will examine how proactive AI is reshaping employee experience, operational resilience, and building performance - and what leaders must redesign now to stay ahead of autonomous operations.

Hybrid work is now the norm, yet many organisations still struggle with inconsistent meeting experiences, fragmented technology, and workplaces that fail to justify the commute. As leaders rethink flexibility, culture, and collaboration, the challenge is no longer simply enabling hybrid work — it is creating environments that genuinely support performance and connection across distributed teams.

This panel brings together workplace and technology leaders to explore what employees actually need from the office, how organisations are redesigning spaces and policies around hybrid realities, and why simpler, more human-centred workplace experiences are becoming critical to the future of work.

From Sedus.

Bayer's new Dynamic Shared Ownership (DSO) approach represents a significant global shift in the companý´s operating model, designed to replace traditional hierarchies towards more streamlined, responsive and more customer focused outcomes. By enabling teams to make decisions autonomously and working within 90-day cycles, the DSO model aims to cut down on bureaucracy, foster innovation, and enhance financial outcomes. Implementing DSO in the Real Estate department resulted in more agile structures, faster decision making, more team empowerment and better execution.

As financial institutions rethink how and where work happens, Berlin is emerging as a testbed for progressive workplace transformation. In this session, we explore how two major banks are reimagining their environments—from innovation-driven HQ strategies to the development of campuses. Combining real project insight with on-the-ground perspectives, the discussion will unpack what’s driving change, what’s working in practice, and how workplace design is supporting culture, talent, and future-ready banking.

As hybrid working matures, organisations face a more difficult challenge than simply getting people back to the office: creating workplaces that genuinely improve how people work. EDGE Friedrichspark is a direct response to this shift — a project designed not around presence alone, but around performance, collaboration, experience, and culture. We examine this as a live case study ... how to build workplaces people actively choose to use, how does smart building infrastructure change the way people experience a building, how does a building effect the total cost of occupancy for tenants? What role does hospitality-led design play in making an office feel worth the commute? And how does Friedrichspark's approach to sustainability and wellbeing shape the daily experience of people inside the building?

The discussion examines how landlords and occupiers are working together at projects like EDGE Friedrichspark to create environments that are more adaptive, more human-centred, and genuinely aligned with the future of work.

Drawing on insights from the State of the Workplace 2026 survey, this session explores a critical shift in workplace strategy. While hybrid working patterns have largely settled, employee engagement is declining and frustration with everyday workplace friction remains high. The data exposes a widening “performance gap” between the intent behind workplace investment and the experience employees actually have. This talk reframes the workplace not as background infrastructure, but as a strategic performance lever—and challenges leaders to rethink how space, services and technology either enable human performance or actively undermine it.

As the day concludes, join us to reflect on key themes, insights, and takeaways from the conference. This interactive session will distil key learnings, spark discussion, and explore how the ideas presented can drive future action. Share your thoughts, gain fresh perspectives, and leave inspired to turn insights into impact.