The future of work is being actively reshaped across the Middle East. WORKTECH26 Dubai brings together thought leaders from corporate real estate, workplace strategy, technology and HR to explore the forces redefining how organisations design, manage and experience the office. The conference programme will examine the return-to-office reset, AI-driven decision-making, smart-building innovation and the shift towards experience-led workplaces – offering insight into the key drivers of change that will shape portfolios, performance and people strategies across the region.
- DUBAI
CONFERENCE AGENDA
CONFERENCE AGENDA
Registration Opens
Conference Opens
Chairpersons' Opening Remarks & Welcome Address
Welcome to WORKTECH26 Dubai and an introduction to the key questions shaping the day.
Resetting the Real Estate Playbook: Portfolio Transformation for a New Dubai
Dubai’s workplace market is entering a new phase as organisations respond to stronger office attendance, business growth and increasing demand for high-quality space. Corporate occupiers are reassessing portfolios shaped during the hybrid-work era and exploring how relocations, headquarters upgrades and flexible workspace models can support future growth. This theme examines how leaders are balancing limited supply, rising costs and changing workforce expectations while using workplace transformation as a catalyst for broader organisational change.
State of the Market: Dubai Workplace Trends & Insights
Kick off the day by examining the forces reshaping Dubai and the wider UAE workplace market. This opening trends session will set the scene around return-to-office, business growth, premium-space demand, changing workforce expectations, AI and the evolving role of corporate real estate.
Resetting the Corporate Real Estate Playbook for the Return-to-Office
Organisations across Dubai and Abu Dhabi are reassessing the assumptions that shaped the hybrid-work era. After years of downsizing and consolidation, leadership teams are now enforcing stronger return-to-office mandates, expanding headcounts and competing for limited high-quality space. This opening panel explores the shift from density-driven planning to experience-led workplaces, the financial implications of the new operating environment, and the growing need for cross-functional alignment.
Coffee Break and Networking
AI-Powered Workplace Strategy: From Data to Better Decisions
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how organisations plan, design and operate workplaces across the region. From portfolio scenario modelling and utilisation analysis to predictive facilities management and more adaptive employee experiences, AI is creating opportunities to make faster and more informed decisions. This theme explores how workplace, real estate and technology leaders can move beyond disconnected tools toward integrated intelligence, while maintaining human judgement, transparency and trust as AI becomes embedded in workplace strategy.
What Happens Now AI is Table Stakes
Nearly every occupier is now piloting AI, which means adoption has stopped being a differentiator. This presentation explores what separates value from permanent pilots, where AI is being pointed today, platform trade-offs and the moves that decide the outcome.
AI as the New Engine of Workplace and Portfolio Strategy
AI and PropTech are rapidly transforming how organisations plan, measure and deliver their real estate. From utilisation analytics across vast geographies to scalable, bookable workspace systems, data-driven tools are enabling more flexible portfolios and healthier, more responsive environments. The session also explores how AI is reshaping design and delivery, strengthening programming, reducing variation orders and improving coordination.
Culture by Design: Belonging, Inclusion and Human Performance
Workplace design does more than accommodate people—it influences how they communicate, collaborate and experience organisational culture. In Dubai’s highly diverse and multicultural business environment, space can play a particularly important role in creating belonging, supporting wellbeing and connecting people across different backgrounds and working styles. This theme explores how movement, furniture, spatial planning and workplace experience can strengthen inclusion, encourage meaningful interaction and create environments where people can perform at their best.
How Can the Workplace Support Our Body and Mind – and Help Us Perform at Our Best in an Age of Constant Stimulation?
Spaces that Care explores how workplace design can influence the way people feel, work and connect. Drawing on insights from neuroscience, psychology and behavioural research, alongside findings from ongoing research into the evolving workplace, the talk looks at the relationship between human needs and the spaces we create.
From focus and collaboration to connection, retreat and recovery, it considers how different spatial qualities can support different activities, experiences and states of mind. The talk concludes by exploring how a more conscious, human-centred approach to design can translate these insights into workplace environments that support well-being and performance – and into an ecosystem of spaces that truly care.
Lunch and Networking Break
The Intuitive Workplace: Using Wayfinding and Neuroscience to Improve Belonging and Performance
Drawing on projects for global organisations including Amazon and Google, Tim Fendley will explore how wayfinding, behavioural insight and neuroscience can make workplaces easier to navigate, more efficient and more welcoming—strengthening employee experience, connection and belonging.
Human Powered Technology: Smarter infrastructure with less
Workplace technology is becoming smarter, but often at the cost of more batteries, more wiring and more maintenance. What if smart lockers could operate without any of them? At WORKTECH Dubai, Aitor Elorza, Chief Commercial Officer at OJMAR, will explore how battery-free and wireless locker technology is redefining workplace storage. Powered by everyday human interaction, it eliminates batteries and cabling, reducing complexity, Capex, Opex and environmental impact. Could the smartest locker be the one that powers itself?
The Workplace as a Platform for Organisational Change
Major workplace projects are increasingly being used to support wider transformation across culture, technology, operations and employee experience. Rather than treating the office as a completed design project, organisations are developing more flexible workplace models that can evolve alongside changing business needs. This theme explores how leaders are using phased relocations, agile real-estate strategies, shared environments and new workplace technologies to modernise established organisations and create more connected, responsive and future-ready workplaces.
The “Corporate” Gap in Corporate Real Estate – What Business Problems Should Corporate Real Estate Be Solving?
Disruption is no longer the exception—it is the operating environment. This session makes the case for aligning corporate real estate strategy to the problems the organisation is actually trying to solve, whether pursuing growth or protecting value, and matching every real estate decision accordingly.
Coffee & Networking Break
Form and the Formation of Culture
Workplace design is not just walls and furniture—it is the invisible script that shapes how people think, interact and belong. The spaces we inhabit communicate rules, values and possibilities. Design does not simply house work; it guides it.
Beyond Activity and Experience: The Rise of Decision-Based Workplace Strategy
Workplace strategy has evolved from efficiency-focused Taylorism to Activity-Based Working and Experience-Based Working. Decision-Based Working represents the next evolution, using integrated people and place data to support objective, evidence-based decisions and help leaders balance cost, employee experience and business performance with confidence.
Workplace Evolution: Beyond the Office
The workplace is no longer just about where people work — it’s becoming part of a much broader organisational shift. This fireside chat explores how technology, wellness and the evolving employee value proposition are reshaping workplace strategy and influencing how organisations think about their people and environments. From changing employee expectations to the need for greater flexibility and adaptability, the conversation will explore what workplace evolution means for organisations navigating continuous change.
