If there’s one constant in our profession, it’s change. Recent research from LinkedIn and Pleo has highlighted tensions familiar to those of us who’ve spent decades supporting executives and teams: the push-pull between AI adoption and human collaboration, alongside the ongoing tug-of-war between office presence and remote working.

Having navigated multiple workplace revolutions throughout my career, I’m witnessing yet another pivotal moment for management support professionals. Let’s examine what’s actually happening beneath the headlines and what it means for your role.

The AI reality check

The statistics are striking: 59% of UK businesses are more likely to adopt AI than hire new staff, and 70% of job skills are predicted to change by 2030. But here’s what they’re not telling you: the implementation is proving far messier than the PowerPoint slides suggest.

Nearly half of business leaders report digital overload is driving them back to traditional tools, while workers waste three working weeks annually switching between incompatible systems. As someone who’s been tasked with implementing new technologies since the dawn of email, this doesn’t surprise me one bit.

What does this mean for you? While executives are being dazzled by AI demonstrations, they’re overlooking the integration challenges. This creates a critical opportunity for management support professionals who understand both the promise and the practical limitations of these tools.

When I worked at a global professional services firm in the early 2000s, I wasn’t the person who knew the most about our new CRM system, but I was the person who understood how it needed to fit into our actual workflows. Twenty years later, the technology has changed, but the dynamic hasn’t.

The hybrid work evolution

The second significant trend is the continued resistance to full-time office mandates. Over half of UK employees don’t want increased office attendance requirements, yet most still value in-person interactions for specific purposes.

This isn’t simply about people wanting to work in pyjamas. LinkedIn’s research shows employees recognise that some activities – brainstorming, key decisions, relationship building – genuinely benefit from face-to-face interaction. What they’re rejecting is commuting for tasks that can be done just as effectively remotely.

Having supported executives across multiple industries, I’ve observed that the most efficient organisations aren’t those with the strictest attendance policies, but those with the clearest purpose for in-person time. When I managed a publishing team split across three locations, our productivity skyrocketed when we stopped treating all work as equal and started designing our collaboration around specific outcomes.

What this means for management support professionals

These trends aren’t just reshaping the workplace; they’re redefining our profession. The executive assistant who thrives in 2025 won’t be the one who masters the latest AI tool or perfectly manages a hybrid calendar. It will be the one who addresses the underlying tensions these technologies and working patterns create.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Position yourself as an integration specialist, not just a tool user. I recently spoke with an EA who saved her organisation thousands by identifying redundancies between their new AI tools and existing systems, something the technology procurement team had missed entirely. She’s now involved in all new tech decisions.
2. Become the architect of meaningful collaboration. Stop being the person who merely schedules meetings and start being the one who designs them. When my executive was struggling with hybrid team cohesion, I created a framework that distinguished between decision meetings, creative sessions, and information sharing, each with different expectations for attendance and participation.
3. Develop metrics that matter. In a hybrid environment, visibility is no longer a proxy for productivity. Create systems that measure outcomes rather than activity. One of the most valuable changes I made was shifting from tracking my executive’s calendar density to monitoring decision completion rates.
4. Master the art of contextual communication. With teams split between home and office, information sharing becomes both more critical and more complex. I’ve found that successful support professionals now spend more time thinking about how and when to communicate than on what to say.

Terrified of AI

Let’s be honest: many in our profession are still clinging to outdated notions of their value. They’re desperately trying to be more efficient at tasks that technology will soon make obsolete, rather than developing the integration, design, and communication capabilities that will define the future-proof assistant.

I recently mentored an EA with twenty years of experience who was terrified of AI. She was spending hours improving her formatting skills in tools that will likely be automated within months.

We redirected her energy toward developing system thinking and collaborative design expertise, areas where her human judgment and organisational knowledge create irreplaceable value.

The path forward

The workplace is fragmenting, physically through hybrid arrangements and functionally through technology adoption. This creates gaps that management support professionals are uniquely positioned to bridge, but only if we’re willing to evolve beyond our traditional skill sets.

When I look at the most successful support professionals in my network, they’re not the ones with the most technical certifications or the neatest filing systems. They’re the ones who help their organisations navigate complexity by connecting disparate systems, people, and information flows.

The future doesn’t belong to those who can execute tasks perfectly. It belongs to those who can make sense of chaos, who can see patterns across seemingly unrelated developments, and who can design solutions that address root causes rather than symptoms.

This evolution offers opportunity

This isn’t a comfortable transformation for many of us who built our careers on being the reliable, efficient engine behind the scenes. But it’s a necessary one if we want to remain relevant in a workplace where routine tasks are increasingly automated and physical presence is increasingly optional.

The good news? This evolution offers the opportunity to finally shed the limiting perceptions of our role and demonstrate the strategic value we’ve always provided but rarely received credit for.

The key is to stop defining yourself by what you do and start articulating the complex problems you solve.