A safety crew investigating uncommon constructing exercise typically wants greater than entry information to grasp what occurred. Most organizations already accumulate data that may present crucial context, together with customer knowledge, room reservations, occupancy data, and upkeep schedules. The problem is that the data typically lives in numerous methods managed by totally different groups.
That problem sits on the heart of many conversations taking place September 14-16 at World Safety Alternate (GSX) 2026. As organizations undertake AI, develop office expertise applications, and search for higher methods to handle more and more complicated services, safety leaders are paying nearer consideration to the connections between office operations, services knowledge, customer exercise, and safety data.
The result’s a rising curiosity in office intelligence: the power to grasp what is occurring throughout folks, locations, belongings, and operations by connecting data that historically lived in separate methods.
Key takeaways
- AI success is dependent upon greater than expertise: Organizations typically wrestle with governance, integration, and knowledge readiness lengthy earlier than they wrestle with AI itself
- Worker presence knowledge supplies beneficial operational context: Entry information, customer exercise, reservations, and occupancy data may help safety, office, and facility groups construct a extra full view of office exercise
- Fashionable safety requires cross-functional collaboration: Safety leaders more and more depend on services, office, IT, HR, and authorized groups to handle shared challenges round operations, resilience, governance, and threat administration
A lot of crucial discussions at GSX this 12 months revolve round how organizations can create that visibility whereas sustaining privateness, governance, and belief.
AI is altering how organizations take into consideration office knowledge
For years, office methods generated beneficial data that hardly ever prolonged past its authentic function. Reservation methods helped workers discover desks and assembly rooms. Customer administration platforms supported visitor experiences and website safety. Entry management methods tracked entries and exits. Facility groups collected upkeep and operational knowledge to maintain buildings operating effectively.
Most organizations considered these methods as separate instruments designed to resolve separate issues. As office expertise environments expanded, knowledge typically remained fragmented throughout a number of platforms, making it troublesome to create a unified view of office exercise. In truth, practically 77% of respondents agree that knowledge silos hinder their group’s capability to carry out real-time analytics and data-driven decision-making, in response to IBM.
AI is altering that dialog. Leaders more and more wish to perceive how data from totally different sources can work collectively to disclose patterns, assist decision-making, and supply operational context that will be troublesome to establish from a single system alone. The main focus has shifted from merely amassing knowledge to connecting it, governing it, and making it helpful.
The chance is important, however so is the problem. In accordance with JLL’s World Actual Property Expertise Survey 2025, 92% of occupiers have been operating AI pilots, but solely 5% had achieved all their AI program objectives. The findings counsel that organizations typically wrestle not with entry to AI itself, however with the underlying knowledge, governance, integration, and operational processes wanted to assist profitable adoption.
For safety leaders, that problem creates an vital query: How can office, services, customer, and operational knowledge work collectively to create clearer visibility into what’s taking place throughout the group whereas sustaining applicable controls round entry and use?
Safety more and more is dependent upon collaboration throughout departments
A lot of crucial safety selections not occur throughout the safety division alone. Organizations more and more deliver collectively safety, services, office, IT, HR, and authorized groups to reply to shared challenges starting from emergency preparedness and customer administration to hybrid work insurance policies and AI governance.
Take into account a standard office situation. A contractor wants entry to a safe space of a facility. Safety groups might handle entry insurance policies, facility groups might oversee the work being carried out, office groups might coordinate website logistics, and HR or authorized groups might set up compliance necessities. Every group owns a part of the method, however none owns the whole image.
The identical sample seems throughout investigations, enterprise continuity planning, and office security initiatives. Safety leaders more and more depend on data and experience from different departments as a result of the underlying dangers typically span a number of features. As organizations accumulate extra office and operational knowledge, additionally they want stronger collaboration to make sure groups interpret and use that data constantly.
That shift helps clarify why conferences like GSX proceed to broaden their focus. In accordance with ASIS management, immediately’s safety leaders more and more want to grasp how expertise, intelligence, enterprise continuity, and threat administration intersect with conventional safety tasks. GSX 2026 displays that shift with greater than 200 academic classes masking subjects resembling AI, governance, investigations, resilience, data safety, intelligence, and enterprise threat administration.
Worker presence knowledge is turning into a crucial supply of office intelligence
For years, organizations have collected details about how workers, guests, and contractors work together with bodily workplaces. Traditionally, a lot of that data lived in separate methods, serving particular person operational functions. Badge methods managed entry. Customer platforms managed visitors. Office instruments dealt with reservations. Occupancy methods measured area utilization.
At this time, leaders are starting to view these alerts collectively as a strategic supply of . That shift displays a rising want for context. Safety groups can typically decide that an occasion occurred, however understanding why it occurred or whether or not it aligns with anticipated office exercise ceaselessly requires data from a number of methods.
Worker presence knowledge is commonly misunderstood as attendance monitoring. In actuality, it represents a set of office alerts that assist organizations perceive how folks work together with areas, companies, and office expertise all through the day.
These alerts can embody:
- Badge entry exercise
- Workspace and assembly room reservations
- Customer interactions
- Occupancy and utilization knowledge
- Office purposes
- Id and entry methods
- Location and floorplan data
- Test-ins and office service requests
- Group scheduling and collaboration patterns
Take into account a standard office situation. A safety crew opinions after-hours exercise in a constructing. Entry information verify that a number of workers entered the power. Customer knowledge exhibits a contractor checked in earlier within the day. A reservation system signifies a venture crew booked close by collaboration area. Amenities information reveal scheduled upkeep in the identical space.
Every document supplies a bit of data. Taken collectively, they create a extra full image of what occurred.
The worth of worker presence knowledge appears totally different relying on who’s utilizing it. Safety groups, office leaders, services managers, and executives typically depend on the identical underlying alerts, however they use them to reply totally different operational questions.
| Stakeholder | What they might wish to perceive |
|---|---|
| Safety groups | Whether or not office exercise aligns with expectations and whether or not associated entry, customer, or operational occasions present further context. |
| Office and actual property leaders | Utilization patterns, collaboration developments, and alternatives to optimize area. |
| Amenities and operations groups | The right way to prioritize companies, allocate assets, and establish altering demand throughout services. |
| Government leaders | Perception into office investments, operational resilience, and the way successfully folks, locations, and assets are getting used. |
The organizations making probably the most progress will not be essentially amassing extra knowledge than their friends. They’re discovering methods to attach present office alerts, set up clear governance practices, and switch office intelligence into higher operational selections.
The place the worker presence knowledge dialog goes subsequent: Eptura at GSX 2026
Lots of the themes showing throughout this 12 months’s GSX agenda come collectively in Eptura’s session, Defending and Harnessing Worker Presence Knowledge within the Age of AI.
Offered by Richard Noel, director of Safety Operations & Infrastructure, and Miguel Perez, vp of Product Administration, the session explores how organizations can use office alerts extra successfully whereas sustaining governance, privateness controls, and accountability. Quite than specializing in a single expertise, the presentation examines how office methods generate data that may assist safety, office, and expertise groups higher perceive exercise throughout services.
Probably the most beneficial elements of the presentation is its sensible strategy to governance. Richard and Miguel discover questions many organizations are actively attempting to reply: Who owns office knowledge? Who can entry it? What authorizes its use? How lengthy ought to organizations retain it? Can decision-making processes be reconstructed months later if questions come up?
The session additionally outlines a sensible maturity framework that helps organizations transfer from amassing office alerts to governing, operationalizing, and making ready these alerts for AI-enabled use instances. The framework acknowledges a actuality many organizations face immediately. Most already possess beneficial office data. The higher problem is constructing the governance, integrations, accountability constructions, and working fashions wanted to make use of that data responsibly and successfully.
Study extra and add the session to your GSX agenda.
Often Requested Questions
By Erin Sevitz
As Vice President of Content material and Buyer Advertising at Eptura, Erin Sevitz oversees groups chargeable for offering worktech insights and interesting 25 million Eptura customers worldwide. With over 10 years in thought management on office administration and the constructed surroundings, Erin brings deep business data to her function. Beforehand, she led communications for the Worldwide Facility Administration Affiliation, a world nonprofit devoted to skilled growth for office strategists and constructing managers, and served as editor in chief for IFMA’s FMJ journal.
