Human-led, data-powered workplaces that keep your best people.
I help organisations that are losing talent or money redesign how they work and how they adopt AI, using evidence from their own people, place and tech data.
No buzzwords. No guesswork.
About ThinkWorkPlay
What is ThinkWorkPlay?
ThinkWorkPlay is a workplace research and advisory practice that helps organisations augment their success and retain their talent by improving how they work. It was founded in February 2026 around the core belief that well designed work benefits employees, organisations and society as a whole. In practice, that means removing the friction, bottlenecks and outdated habits that slow people down, so they can focus on work that matters.
What does ThinkWorkPlay do?
As the Founder and Lead Adviser, I help organisations succeed in five ways, and each one starts from the same question: what does the evidence say?
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Human-Centric AI Transformation & Governance: redesigning processes so AI empowers employees rather than becoming another 'black box', with governance people actually follow.
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Change Management & Training: making new ways of working stick, from graduate to executive level.
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Workplace Experience Audits: identifying what's driving friction across physical space, digital workflows, and people and culture.
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Hybrid & Flexible Work Strategy: designing equitable policies and workflows that bring out the best in people.
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Fractional Workplace Analytics: senior advisory support on the days you need it.
You can see the full detail on each service, including example outcomes and case studies, on the Services page.
Who does ThinkWorkPlay work with?
I work with HR, Workplace and IT leaders in organisations whose workplaces or systems are costing them talent, and who are ready to examine, challenge and redesign rather than paper over the problem. For example, these are the problems I'm most often asked to solve:
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Pressure to use AI without a clear purpose or roadmap, often alongside shadow AI use and no governance people actually follow
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New policies or AI tools rolled out with no training or change plan to help teams adopt them
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Employee experience slipping and attrition rising, with no clear picture of why
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A return-to-office mandate, or flexible policy, that's backfiring
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Office space and digital collaboration tools that don't support day-to-day work, leading to friction, overtime and burnout
What shapes ThinkWorkPlay's approach?
Two principles shape everything I do: decisions about work should start from evidence, and the data and thinking behind them should be joined up across the organisation.
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Data at the centre of every decision. Too many workplace and AI decisions still rest on assumptions, legacy habits or the loudest voice in the room. I put your organisation's own data at the centre, so every recommendation can be traced back to what's actually happening.
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Joined-up thinking across space, technology, people and culture. In most organisations, real estate owns the building, IT owns the tools, HR owns the people, and culture belongs to everyone and no one. Each team makes sensible decisions with its own data, yet the employee experience falls into the gaps between them. I've seen how these silos lead to lost talent, lost productivity and wasted money. That's why I connect those data flows and perspectives, so leaders can see the whole picture and act on it together.
Why trust this approach?
I've built this approach over 12+ years of workplace research and advisory experience across the CRE, financial and tech sectors and academia.
At UnWork, a future of work consultancy, I headed the workplace analytics team and led human-centric AI transformation projects. Before that, as a Senior Researcher at Leesman, the global employee experience benchmark, I led analysis of a (then) 1.4M+ employee database. My PhD (UCL, 2019), focused on knowledge work, found that flexibility over where and when employees work drives measurable, simultaneous gains in both productivity and wellbeing, and so it is the evidence base this practice is built on.
As a keynote speaker, I share this evidence on the human side of AI and the future of work, for example on leading with empathy in the age of AI and on the workplace social contract. I'm also living the problem I solve, as a London-based working mother and long-time hybrid and four-day-week worker.
How do I get started?
The easiest way to get started is to email me at madi@thinkworkplay.me or book a discovery call. Together, we'll talk through what's driving the problem in your organisation. I'm currently booking discovery calls and roadmaps for Q1 / Q2 2027, following family leave.