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Another day, another headline asking whether AI will replace jobs or even make the office obsolete. But the media often misses a bigger question: What grows more valuable as AI changes how people spend time?
Emerging AI and office design trends suggest that the workplace isn’t becoming less relevant; its purpose is evolving. According to Gensler’s 2026 Global Workplace Survey, heavy AI users spend less time working alone. They spend more time learning, collaborating, and building relationships.
Rather than seeing AI as replacing the office, we should focus on how it changes what office employees can do.
Key Takeaways:
While most talk about AI focuses on efficiency, leaders should also consider how it helps employees reallocate time.
Gensler’s research found that employees who make extensive use of AI tend to spend roughly 1.5 times more learning than other workers. They also tend to have stronger workplace friendships, greater willingness to share ideas, and better relationships with their teammates.
Although the research does not say AI directly causes these results, it shows a link. Organizations that use AI are seeing new workplace behaviors.
What’s even more interesting is that time spent in the office has remained relatively stable. This suggests that what’s changing isn’t where people work, but how they use their time.
This information is shaping new conversations around workplace design for AI-driven work. As technology handles some tasks, employees spend more time learning from each other. They also solve problems together and build stronger professional relationships.
As AI becomes more common, the office is becoming more valuable for work technology can’t replicate. That might include mentoring a new employee. Brainstorming solutions to a complicated challenge. Sharing institutional knowledge that isn’t documented anywhere.
These instances require human trust, judgement, creativity, and experience. Rather than seeing AI as a competitor, organizations can focus on where people add the most value.
If tech helps employees complete certain tasks more efficiently, it creates more opportunities for collaboration, informal learning, relationship-building, and innovative problem solving. But those human-centered interactions happen best when people can connect in a carefully designed environment.
The shift is driving conversations around designing offices for AI-era collaboration, where workplaces support the exchange of ideas as much as individual productivity.
Unfortunately, many office layouts aren’t designed for today’s work patterns.
Gensler reports that nearly two-thirds of employees must modify, or “hack,” their offices. They do this to fix poor acoustics, limited privacy, uncomfortable temperatures, distractions, and weak ergonomics. It is one of the biggest signs of a growing mismatch. The traditional office no longer meets today’s workplace needs.
In the past, designers created workplaces mainly for focused individual work. But learning, mentoring, collaboration, and sharing knowledge are now more important. Employees need an environment that supports these activities.
Organizations often cite flexible meeting areas, quiet focus spaces, low noise levels, updated technology, and comfortable break areas. These features help make the workplace more effective.
These aren’t simply employee perks. They’re key components of future workplace design that help people perform at their best while adapting to changing business needs.
AI is still new in many workplaces. None of us has a clear blueprint for an AI-enabled office. This is because it keeps evolving. That makes flexibility more important than ever.
Instead of making permanent decisions based on assumptions, organizations can experiment with different workplace concepts. Learning spaces, collaboration hubs, informal gathering areas, reconfigurable meeting rooms, and social lounges all provide opportunities to observe how employees naturally work together.
Furniture rental offers a practical way to support that experimentation. With furniture rental, you avoid big upfront costs before your long-term needs are clear. You can test new layouts, gather employee feedback, and refine workplace plans on your schedule.
CORT Workplace Solutions helps you navigate changing AI workplace trends. We offer furniture rental, workplace design services, flexible workplace solutions, and resources. These tools support your evolving workplace strategies. A partnership with CORT won’t help you predict the future, but it will help you create a space that adapts as needs change.
AI alone won’t define the future workplace. Organizations will shape it by creating workplaces that help people do what only people can do.
As work evolves, you have the opportunity to rethink how your offices support learning, collaboration, mentoring, creativity, and human connections as technology advances. To thrive in the future, you can’t just adopt AI. You must build an office that supports people. It should help them do work only humans can do.
Welcoming flexibility and regularly checking how employees use their spaces helps leaders build workplaces ready for what comes next. CORT Workplace Solutions can help you adapt with confidence as both technology and the workplace continue to evolve.
