This article is based on the Allwork.Space Future of Work Podcast episode “Why the Future Office Must Earn the Commute in an AI-Driven World with Bob Cicero.” Click here to watch or listen to the full episode.
For decades, the workplace was designed around individual productivity: rows of desks, private offices, and technology built to help people complete tasks faster. Now, according to Cisco workplace leader Bob Cicero, AI may be pushing offices toward something very different.
As organizations race to integrate AI agents and digital workers into daily operations, the physical office is starting to serve a new purpose — not as a place to sit and process emails, but as a place designed around collaboration, interaction, and human connection.
That was one of the central themes in a recent episode of The Future of Work® Podcast, where we spoke with Cicero about how AI is beginning to transform both workplace design and the role offices play inside organizations.
Cicero leads Future Proofed Workplace for Real Estate at Cisco, where he works across workplace technology, real estate strategy, and enterprise transformation. His work focuses on how physical space, digital infrastructure, and AI systems are increasingly becoming part of the same workplace ecosystem.
AI could change what humans do at the office
Cicero believes AI represents one of the largest technology shifts most workers will experience in their lifetime. But unlike earlier waves of workplace technology, this transition may fundamentally change what humans actually come into the office to do.
As AI agents and digital workers take over more repetitive or task-based work, the office itself may become less focused on individual output and more centered around collaboration.
He described a future where many activities traditionally done alone at a desk are increasingly handled by AI systems, while human workers spend more time solving problems together, building relationships, mentoring, and collaborating in smaller groups.
That transition is already influencing workplace design.
According to Cicero, Cisco’s data shows employees are increasingly working in small collaborative groups rather than large centralized gatherings. As a result, many organizations are redesigning offices around smaller, more flexible collaboration spaces instead of rows of assigned desks.
He said Cisco now views roughly 70% of workplace space as “we space” dedicated to collaboration, with the remaining 30% reserved for individual focus work.
The office is becoming part workplace, part experience
The pandemic forced companies to rethink whether employees needed offices at all. Now many organizations are facing a different question: what makes the commute worth it?
Cicero said companies increasingly need to “earn the commute” by making office experiences frictionless, useful, and noticeably better than working remotely.
That goes beyond amenities. In practice, it means reducing the everyday frustrations employees encounter when they arrive at the office — confusing layouts, unreliable meeting technology, poor room availability, or awkward hybrid meeting setups that make collaboration harder instead of easier.
He argued that many workers still encounter too much friction once they arrive in person, especially in hybrid environments where physical and virtual collaboration constantly overlap.
For Cicero, successful workplaces increasingly resemble hospitality environments where technology fades into the background and people can move naturally through spaces without interruption.
That includes everything from wayfinding tools to room automation to systems that automatically adjust environmental conditions based on occupancy and usage patterns.
Workplace data is becoming operational infrastructure
One of the biggest operational changes happening behind the scenes involves how companies collect and use workplace data.
After the pandemic, many organizations rushed to install occupancy sensors and tracking systems to understand how offices were being used. Cicero said many companies eventually realized traditional badge data alone could not accurately explain how employees interacted with physical spaces.
Now, organizations are increasingly using existing IT infrastructure — including WiFi systems, collaboration platforms, and workplace technology — to understand occupancy patterns, room usage, collaboration behavior, and traffic flow inside offices.
Cisco, for example, uses workplace technology infrastructure to analyze how employees move throughout office environments and how meeting spaces perform over time.
That data can then influence everything from real estate decisions to thermal comfort inside meeting rooms.
Cicero described workplace technology as moving away from isolated systems toward a shared operational platform where physical buildings, collaboration tools, IT infrastructure, and AI systems all communicate together.
Agentic AI may change workplace management itself
Much of the discussion focused on the rise of agentic AI, where autonomous AI agents perform tasks, communicate with systems, and coordinate actions with limited human involvement.
Cicero believes workplaces are still in the early stages of preparing for that reality.
In his view, future workplace operations may involve AI agents managing everything from room scheduling and environmental controls to network optimization and employee workflows in real time.
He described scenarios where workplace systems automatically relocate meetings if connectivity problems emerge, notify employees of room changes, adjust wireless configurations, or personalize room settings before employees arrive.
That level of automation, however, depends on organizations building unified technology platforms where workplace systems can securely exchange information across departments and functions.
The challenge is not simply adding AI tools, but connecting physical space, IT systems, workplace operations, and employee experience into one coordinated infrastructure.
Coworking’s technology gap is becoming more visible
The discussion also touched on coworking and flexible workspace operators, particularly as hybrid work continues pushing companies toward more distributed workplace strategies.
Cicero said many coworking providers initially focused heavily on physical space while underestimating how important workplace technology would become for hybrid collaboration.
Poor video conferencing experiences, inconsistent meeting technology, and unreliable connectivity created friction for workers trying to collaborate across physical and remote environments.
Now, he sees technology quality becoming one of the defining competitive factors for coworking operators.
Companies increasingly expect coworking environments to support seamless hybrid collaboration regardless of what platforms employees use or where participants join from.
That expectation is also changing how companies evaluate flexible workspace providers, especially as organizations look for distributed workplace options that still support enterprise-level collaboration standards.
The future office may become more human, not less
Despite concerns that AI could reduce human interaction at work, Cicero argued the opposite may happen inside physical offices.
If AI systems increasingly handle repetitive or administrative work, offices may become more focused on the kinds of interactions technology cannot fully replace: relationship building, mentorship, creativity, collaboration, and shared problem solving.
At the same time, organizations are still trying to figure out how humans and digital workers will operate together inside the same workplace systems.
For Cicero, the future office is not simply smarter technology layered onto old workplace models. Rather, it is a larger rethink of how physical space, AI systems, virtual collaboration, and human behavior function together.
And while many organizations are still early in that process, the transition is already starting to influence how workplaces are designed, managed, and experienced day to day.
