Everyone Thinks AI Means Fewer People. Savills Could Prove the Opposite

Savills has just reported another strong set of results, with revenue continuing to grow despite difficult conditions across the property market. But there is another number I think estate agency owners should pay attention to. Revenue Per Employee.

 

Savills reported group revenue of £2.55 billion for 2025 and had just over 40,000 employees, giving it an approximate Revenue Per Employee, or RPE, of around £63,000. Now, Savills is a huge global property business, so comparing it directly with an independent UK estate agency isn't particularly meaningful. But the number raises an interesting question.

 

What would happen if Savills didn't reduce those 40,000 people, but instead found a way for each of them to generate significantly more revenue? What if contrary to all of the AI messaging out there, the opportunity isn't fewer humans?

Much of the conversation around AI today is about getting technology to do people's jobs. How many tasks can we automate? How many emails can AI write? How many phone calls can it answer? Ultimately, how many people might we no longer need?

 

I think that's looking at the opportunity the wrong way around. The better question is:

How much more revenue could your existing people generate if they were focused on the key roles that only a human can do?

Building relationships, winning trust, advising clients, negotiating, influencing decisions and creating exceptional experiences. The problem isn't that estate agencies don't have enough opportunities for their people to do these things. Quite the opposite. Even relatively small independent agencies have thousands of relationships and opportunities sitting inside their businesses. The problem is getting the right human in front of the right person, at the right moment, knowing the right thing to say and that doesn't happen by giving everybody a chatbot.

It requires a completely different way of working.

 

For the last ten years at Iceberg Digital, we've been working with estate agencies to refine exactly this way of operating. Not simply building better technology, but developing the specific plan, processes and technology required to change how an estate agency actually works.

 

At the heart of it is what we call the AI Operating Loop. The principle is quite simple. Before AI can be genuinely useful to a business, it needs to be connected to the whole picture. It needs to observe what's happening, understand what it means in the context of that particular company, know what the business is trying to achieve, prioritise what matters and then determine what should happen next.

That last part is crucial.

The purpose isn't to remove the human from the process. It's to put the human in the right place, at the right time, with the right information, to do the things humans are uniquely good at. That's very different from bolting AI onto an existing CRM to answer the phone, write an email or generate some content.

We've spent a decade building the environment around the technology that makes this new way of working possible and we can see the impact in Revenue Per Employee as we have worked with many agencies that started with RPE figures of £50,000 or £60,000 and have gone on to achieve £140,000 or £150,000 per employee. That doesn't happen by chance and it isn't a theory. When you see the same pattern repeatedly across different estate agencies following the same plan and using technology specifically designed to enable it, you are seeing a fundamentally different operating model at work.

The general misunderstanding I see here is that higher RPE doesn't mean fewer people.

Imagine two estate agencies generating £5 million.

One employs 70 people, giving it an RPE of around £71,000. The other employs 35 people and has an RPE of around £143,000.

The obvious AI narrative would be to celebrate the fact that the second agency needs half as many people. I wouldn't.

I'd ask why that agency wouldn't now employ 70 brilliant people and aim to become a £10 million business. That's the opportunity and it can be done just by following the process above.

RPE isn't about reducing humans. It's about increasing what humans are capable of achieving when the business around them is designed properly. Which brings us full circle back to Savills. I don't look at an RPE of around £63,000 and wonder how many of its 40,000 people AI could replace, I wonder what Savills could become if those 40,000 people were able to spend far more of their time applying their expertise, judgement and ability to build human relationships, while the operating system around them continuously made sure they were focused on the opportunities where they could create the most value. They would INCREASE headcount, not reduce it!

That's a far more exciting future. This is Human Potential and is at the heart of my 4th book that I'm currently writing, entitled Human Potential.

I believe we're misunderstanding the biggest opportunity AI is creating for businesses. The winners won't necessarily be those who use AI to employ fewer humans. They'll be those who redesign their businesses so their humans can create dramatically more value. That's what we've spent the last decade building at Iceberg for agents to step into because ultimately, the opportunity presented by artificial intelligence isn't artificial intelligence itself. It's Human Potential.