Is AI bringing us back to the office after all?

For twenty years the direction seemed clear. Technology made the physical workplace less and less necessary. Applications moved to the cloud, meetings became location-independent and the laptop replaced the fixed desk. The conclusion seemed inevitable: we need the office less and less.

But an interesting paradox is emerging. AI, the latest wave of digitalization, can partly reverse that movement. Not because working from home disappears and not because everyone has to be back at the office five days a week. Rather because the digital requirements for professional work are changing rapidly.

The hypothesis of this article is simple: the more digital and AI-dependent organizations become, the more important a professional, secure and scalable digital work environment becomes. And with that, the office can become relevant again. But that immediately raises a second question, and for real estate it may be the most important one: is our office actually ready for this?

First, technology drew us out of the office

There was a time when employees depended on location for almost everything. The server stood in the meter cupboard, files lived on the company network, the fixed phone sat on the desk and software ran locally. Anyone who wanted to work had to be physically present.

Then everything changed in a short period. Cloud computing made applications reachable everywhere. Videoconferencing made meetings location-independent. Laptops and smartphones made the workplace mobile. The pandemic accelerated this development at a pace few had foreseen.

It seemed as though technology would permanently push the physical workplace into the background. But the next wave of technology behaves differently. What if AI actually has the opposite effect on the demand for a good workplace?

AI is changing not only how we work, but also what a workplace needs to be able to do

AI now touches many parts of daily work. Generative AI, AI agents, real-time copilots, large cloud platforms, data analysis, video communication, automation, IoT and digital twins are changing how teams collaborate and make decisions. An important nuance: not every AI application requires enormous local bandwidth. Much of it happens in data centers, and the connection to those data centers is often the decisive factor.

The broader point matters more than any single figure. The modern organization is becoming increasingly dependent on a digital ecosystem that must always be available, secure and scalable. That raises the demands on the environment in which work takes place. Anyone wanting to understand what this means for infrastructure will find a good starting point in smart building technology.

Working from home is here to stay, but home has its limits

Working from home is not going away and works excellently for many tasks. Yet a home workplace has different conditions than a professional business environment. Think of the quality of connectivity and WiFi coverage in the building, cybersecurity, equipment, access management, privacy, support, continuity and access to specific business systems.

So the argument is not that AI makes working from home impossible. The argument is more nuanced: the more critical digital applications become for business operations, the more important it becomes for organizations to have control over the environment in which those applications are used. And that is where the office regains strategic value.

From office as workplace to office as digital infrastructure

Yesterday's office was mainly space. Today's office is space, people and technology. Tomorrow's office may become something else again: space, people, data, AI and connectivity coming together in one place.

In that definition, the building is no longer just the place where employees sit. It becomes a digital business environment where people, systems and data meet. That makes the digital quality of the real estate far more important than the number of square meters.

The question is no longer how many days people need to come to the office, but how good that office needs to be to make them want to come.

AI could cause an unexpected office trend

Consider the hypothesis that AI actually makes the office more relevant. Not necessarily through more square meters per employee, perhaps even through using less space much more intensively. AI can help on numerous fronts here.

• occupancy analysis and workplace reservation;
• energy optimization and climate control;
• facility processes and access management;
• space and meeting room planning;
• predictive maintenance;
• the daily user experience.

As a result, the office can become smarter, more efficient and more attractive. The most interesting development is then no longer more office versus less office, but simply better office. The return to the office thus gets a different reason. Alongside culture, collaboration and connection, a new reason emerges: digital functionality.

But then the office needs to be better than home

This is the critical point. Why would anyone travel to an office with worse WiFi than at home? Why come in if video calls keep stuttering there? Why rent a modern building if the internal data cabling is outdated? Anyone who wants people back at the office must make the office add something. Not just coffee, design or an attractive lobby, but also a better digital work environment.

And that creates a problem for real estate

How does a business owner actually know whether an office can offer this? During a viewing, they see the entrance, the workstations, the meeting rooms, the pantry and the view. They get information about square meters, rent, energy label, service costs and accessibility.

But the most important infrastructure for their digital organization is largely invisible. You cannot see fiber optics. You cannot see redundancy. Data cabling, network capacity and digital continuity are invisible, and cybersecurity is barely visible either. That is precisely why transparency is needed.

The IT-Label makes the invisible visible

The IT-Label aims to make visible what a building can digitally facilitate. An audit can look at, among other things, the available connections, what happens if one connection fails, the internal cabling, the wireless infrastructure, the setup and security of technical rooms, provisions for business continuity, existing building systems, relevant security and the degree of scalability.

All these components are reduced to one understandable question: what can this workplace handle digitally? The methodology behind the IT-Label translates the technical details into a delivery level that everyone can read, from tenant to investor.

Tenants want to know this before they sign

An organization signing for five or ten years is effectively buying years of access to a business environment. It is striking, then, that extensive negotiation takes place over rent, parking spaces, floor finishes and furniture, while the digital infrastructure is sometimes only seriously examined during the fit-out. The logical question is: why don't we look at the digital workplace before the lease agreement? For tenants who want to know what to pay attention to, that is a sensible moment.

From energy label to IT-Label

The comparison is straightforward. The energy label helps explain how energy efficient a building is. The IT-Label aims to help explain how digitally functional a workplace is. The technical work behind it may be complex, but the outcome must remain understandable for tenant, landlord, broker, asset manager, investor and IT advisor. No one is waiting for yet another technical report that nobody reads, the market needs a translation, as also described in from energy label to IT-Label.

That transparency also affects the economics of real estate. Picture two comparable offices: same city, same floor area, same energy label and a comparable rent. One building has limited connectivity and outdated infrastructure, the other has high-quality connections, redundancy and sufficient scalability. In a traditional comparison they look alike. For an AI- and data-driven tenant, possibly not at all. So the question is whether digital quality is becoming a new competitive factor between offices, affecting lettability, tenant retention and future readiness.

From Return to Office to Reason to Office

AI does not have to be a threat to offices. It can actually be an opportunity to make the office relevant again. Not by telling people they have to come back, but by creating an environment where employees say: I work better here than at home. Faster, safer, smarter and together. That is a more powerful strategy than obligation.

The underlying idea can be summarized as: don't force a return, give a reason to come. Collaboration is a reason, culture is a reason, connection is a reason. Technology can become another reason. Perhaps this creates a new division in which home becomes the place for focus and individual work, and the office the place for collaboration, AI-supported processes and high-performance workplaces. That is explicitly a scenario, not a prediction, but the function of the office is changing regardless. For property owners who want to respond to this, the IT-Label for office buildings is a concrete starting point.

Take the first step: have the digital quality mapped out

Today we measure square meters, energy, temperature, occupancy and service costs. Fine. But if organizations are becoming increasingly dependent on digital infrastructure, why don't we also measure and communicate the digital delivery level of their workplace? That is where the role of the IT-Label lies: not prescribing how many days someone should come to the office, but making transparent what the office can offer digitally.

Is everyone heading back to the office? Perhaps. But not because it has to be that way, rather because the office once again has something to offer that home cannot always match: a professional digital environment that can grow along with the business. For that, the real estate simply needs to be ready, and tenant and landlord first need to know what the building can handle digitally. If you want this determined for your building, take a look at how the IT-Label works and map out what your workplace can handle digitally.