Shared workspaces are not completely new – they have been around for nearly 15 years. This concept has grown in popularity over the past 3 years, however, and has probably been fast-tracked since the COVID outbreak, as more companies are seeing the value in allowing staff to work remotely. Co-working spaces are now a very real part of the commercial real estate industry, with many property owners now partnering with shared workspace operators as a part of their leasing strategy.

How Co-Working is Redesigning Workspaces

Co-working operators bring with them the expertise of running a business, which goes beyond simply letting out space to members. The real success of a shared workspace is creating a unique personality to the space that attracts customers that resonate with this personality. Implementing IT systems for online bookings, WiFi tokens for ad hoc space members, access control systems, and IT networks are critical to creating successful shared workspaces. 

Promoting the space with ongoing marketing and community events are needed in order to keep members engaged with the space. So, in essence, the co-working operator needs to have some type of events organisational skills. Members want to feel a part of a community to keep them motivated and these same members often join co-working spaces to grow their network. 

Co-working spaces put people from different industries in a single location, and events are used as a means to introduce members in a casual environment. Social media and website SEO are critical skills needed to promote the space and co-working operators have this experience from operating their existing businesses. 

What works for some spaces is offering a coffee shop as an add on service. These cafés can vary from simply providing a barista to a fully-fledged restaurant for tenants. Depending on the location, the service may be open to the public, as means to derive extra income. Co-working operators should have some skills that needed to handle stock control and the running of a café. Integrating the café into the shared working space by offering some form of a cashless card system, or credit for tenants can also be beneficial, and might also mitigate having to put coffee stations in the space. This would also reduce having to have a dedicated kitchen for the shared space as both areas can make use of a single kitchen.

Co-working services have members at the core of the business. In fact, co-working could be best described as a combination of hospitality, real estate, office IT and restaurant ownership. With traditional landowners being used to maintaining buildings and understanding building costs, I see a lot more collaboration between co-working operators and landowners, and potentially partnerships forming, even with a shared revenue model. Property as a Service is definitely on the cards, and as more businesses leave their traditional offices and look for flexible all-inclusive work nodes, 2021 could see co-working becoming mainstream.

Co.Unity made the decision from the offset to develop our own software platform to operate all aspects of co-working spaces. We opened our flagship space in Hermanus to test our concept, and skill ourselves up in running all aspects of a shared office environment. We believe this puts us in a strong position to partner with landowners who wish to look at this concept as a means of increasing their buildings occupancy. 

The success of any business moving forward would be to look at the current situation and see opportunities, and co-working partnerships could resolve the commercial real estate crisis. To find out more about how shared workspaces can help power the real estate landscape, get in touch with us today.