The 2025 Forefront Workplace Strategy Summit NSW brought together leaders in workplace strategy, design, and technology. The event offered valuable insights into how data, design, and human experience are redefining workplace strategy and the future of hybrid work.
The 2025 Forefront Workplace Strategy Summit NSW gathered leaders across workplace strategy, design and technology for a day of candid, forward-looking discussion. It was a pleasure to be part of the conversation and to exchange ideas with peers, partners and clients who are shaping what work looks like next.
Across keynotes, panels and informal conversations, one idea surfaced repeatedly: presence alone is no longer the measure of success. What matters is purpose. Organisations are shifting their attention from how many people occupy the office to why they come in at all.
Workplaces are now being seen as ecosystems for connection, collaboration and culture rather than static assets. As Grant Christofely of M Moser Associates described, the workplace is a vehicle for business performance – a living environment that can either enable or inhibit human potential.
This perspective invites a deeper question: what do people need from their environment to do their best work, and how can that be understood and supported over time?
Alana Hannaford of JLL spoke about flexibility, adaptability and modularity as enduring principles of hybrid work and workplace design. The ability to adjust quickly to changing team structures, work patterns and expectations has become a fundamental measure of organisational resilience.
Adaptability is not only about movable walls or flexible schedules. It is also about insight. When organizations understand how people actually use space, where they gather, how they collaborate, and what draws them in, they can design with intention rather than assumption.
Several sessions explored the growing role of data in workplace decision-making. Speakers from Macquarie University, Westpac and Origin Energy discussed how utilisation and sentiment data are helping to align workplace strategy with real behaviour.
The consensus was that collecting data is no longer the challenge; interpreting it is. Effective workplace leaders are using analytics to reveal the link between space, experience and performance, and to make the invisible visible.
The potential for artificial intelligence featured throughout the day, particularly in the opening panel on AI-driven workplace transformation and the closing address by Kristine Dery of MIT. Rather than viewing AI as a replacement for human intelligence, the conversation focused on its capacity to simplify complexity and enhance experience.
AI’s value lies in its subtlety: anticipating needs, automating the routine and creating environments that feel effortless to use. The most successful implementations will be those that blend intelligence with empathy, technology with humanity.
A thread that ran through the day was the relationship between wellbeing and performance. Alana Hannaford reminded us that the two are inseparable. Workplaces designed with human wellbeing in mind are more productive, more creative and more enduring.
Kristine Dery’s keynote, inspired by the story of MIT’s “Building 20,” captured this beautifully: innovation flourishes when environments encourage informal connection, experimentation and curiosity. The physical design becomes a facilitator of culture, not simply a reflection of it.
The Summit reinforced that the future of workplace is not a destination but a practice. It is a process of continuous learning – combining data, empathy and creativity to design spaces that evolve alongside the people who use them.
For those of us working at the intersection of technology and design, the challenge is to keep that human focus at the centre. The most advanced workplace is not the one with the most sensors or screens, but the one that quietly helps people do their best work.
Written by the Nura Space team following our participation at the 2025 Forefront Workplace Strategy Summit NSW. Nura Space is an Australian-designed workplace platform helping organisations understand and optimise how people use space: connecting data, design and decision-making to create workplaces that work.
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