The Latest AI Announcement Could Change Your Office Space Requirement

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Microsoft made a recent announcement that could have profound impacts on both future ways of working, organisational culture and office design / property strategy, including office size.?

(By the way, if you’re currently reviewing your office space requirement - considering whether to expand, sublet, consolidate or refurb for hybrid working, come to our "How Much Space?" webinar on March 30. In the webinar we'll explain a method for establishing your ideal office size & setup.)

Your space calculation might be quite different in future due to Microsoft's recent announcement that they are baking in a new AI capability into Microsoft Teams. The capability is very closely related to ChatGPT (see recent editions of this newsletter), and will roll out quickly to those with the new 'Premium' license.?

Their announcement can be found?here , including a preview screenshot which you can see below. In short, virtual meetings will now come with an AI generated summary of who said what, and what actions were agreed on.?

As this sort of technology becomes standard, I can see two possible consequences for office design and footprint to play out over coming years. I think AI could create a 'second wave' rush to remote work, especially with the continuing incentive to hire for talent rather than physical location.??

Consequence #1 Virtual Collaboration Could Become Privileged over Face-to-Face.?

The greatest driver for driving presence in the office at the moment is the virtue of face-to-face collaboration and connection. The new AI could dis-incentivise face-to-face meetings since they'll come without the benefits of an automatic summary & actions tracking.?

This could either weaken the drive to come back to the office, or put a new emphasis on spaces that are equipped with Teams, or are quiet enough for people to create a Teams call from their laptops, even when no one else is dialled in. Perhaps we'll see the invent of new devices installed in various office settings that are specifically designed for this purpose: with directional microphones and one touch operation, a robot could listen to any collaborative conversation that you have and send you a synopsis afterwards. For some, or even many, a meeting without this feature could become unacceptable.??

Consequence #2 We Might Have a Replacement for Face-to-Face 'Bumps'.?

In face-to-face office environments, we often talk about random spontaneous interactions between colleagues from different teams, who otherwise would have little to do with each other.?

The idea is that these interactions build a general cultural fabric and build a sort of ambient awareness of what is happening about the place - projects, news, etc… a sort of village life. In countless undefinable ways this sets the scene for better collaboration, especially when new initiatives require a broad range of teams or functions to come together and feel in-sync.?

Workplace social media channels like Yammer, or Facebook's Workplace allows for casual sharing of news and chatter, to mimic this effect.?

Now, what are the consequences if AI can be instantly activated for any collaborative conversation? With zero friction, the AI could be prompted to share the meeting summary to a company-wide noticeboard. This could be searchable - like a database, so that if a group is tackling an issue or problem, they can quickly bring up all preceding meetings that might intersect.??

I find it entirely plausible that a team could discover that an initiative is already being driven elsewhere in the business, or that another project or squad already has part of a solution that could be ported over.?

A further AI layer could be aggregating all AI-attended meetings to create customised executive summaries, so that anyone wanting to be 'in the know' can effectively get the professional gossip (meant here in a positive sense) on tap.?

So, the value of face to face bumps would have a new pathway for emulation in the virtual space.

This might not replace the sort of personal rapport that can be built solely though sharing presence, but it could still be an enabling factor for maintaining information flow in hybrid or remote-leaning workplaces.?

For some organisations, the end point of this logic could be a smaller office footprint, or a shift to a hub-and-spoke office model, or even a no-office approach.

Final note - after I wrote this post, Microsoft have gone one further and announced?"Co-Pilot" ?AI embedded across all 365, pretty much heading further towards what I've speculated in this article! This system learns from the information within your specific business ecosystem - from your staff's emails etc. The ethical implications are... I don't even know where to begin... but Microsoft appears to have laid off their AI ethics team.