AI fails to shrink offices as flex seats rise 12.3% in H1

Enterprises expanded their footprint by 21.7% as 82.8% of firms held or grew their space.

Flexible workspace demand in Singapore is deepening, with companies expanding their footprints even as artificial intelligence (AI) transforms how and why people use offices.

According to data gathered by flexible workspace provider WeWork, the number of companies in its Singapore portfolio grew 1.2% from last year, driven by small firms, which were up 1.8%.

Beyond headcount, WeWork members in Singapore also committed to more space, with average monthly seats up 12.3% in the first half of the year. Enterprises expanded their footprint by 21.7%, and 82.8% of companies of all sizes maintained or expanded their footprint.

In an earlier interview, JustCo Holdings Ltd. said that the flexible workspace market is increasingly being driven by large companies, as corporations account for more than half of the company’s workstation occupancy.

JustCo Executive Chairman and CEO Kong Wan Sing said the company aims to grow from 54 centres in 12 cities to more than 100 centres across 20 cities by 2029, with Singapore remaining a key market despite rising office costs.

This shift toward flexible space is playing out against a broader transformation in how companies view the office itself, as AI begins reshaping the workforce.

Colliers said in its “Asia Pacific Workplace Insights” that AI’s most immediate impact is on the workforce, reshaping roles, skills and ways of working, with implications for the physical workspace still unfolding.

As a result, the office is being redefined as a hub for collaboration, learning, innovation and knowledge exchange, even as many organisations have yet to factor these workforce shifts into their real estate decisions.

“Workplace leaders looking to reconfigure their space (47%) to support this new way of working, with more collaborative, tech-enabled environments, outnumber those who are primarily planning to shrink their footprint (36%),” Colliers said.

In India and Southeast Asia, Colliers found that more than 40% of respondents rank new AI-driven roles, skills and collaboration as a top priority, pushing demand for different space types, cited by half of respondents in the cluster, whilst reducing overall footprint remains a low-priority outcome at just 7%.

“The story of AI in the workplace, we see, is more of redesign, not retreat. The implication is not automatically more space or less space, but different space: more adaptable settings, stronger technology integration, and a deliberate balance between focused work and interaction,” the Colliers report read.

“As AI automates routine work, the survey reiterates that the office’s role shifts toward the activities that create the greatest value and are hardest to replicate digitally: collaboration, learning, mentoring, knowledge exchange and trust-building,” it added.