Only a few years ago it would have been unthinkable to share your workspace with a stranger. Now co-working spaces across the UK’s cities are attracting a surge of ex-Corporate workers, tech upstarts, freelancers, and young millennial ‘portfolio careerists’ – who all sit side by side happily.
According to online directory CoWorkingLondon there are over 100 in the central London area alone, and a Desk Mag study estimates that almost 300,000 people worked in nearly 6,000 coworking spaces worldwide by the end of 2014.
In 2014, I started Pi Labs, a property tech accelerator that’s based at the stunning new ‘office of the future’, Second Home, in East London. This utopic architect-designed vision for an office is a great example of how our working environments are now being built with people in mind first – the space is transparent, light, airy, and has the best restaurant of any office space in London.
With Second Home full to bursting with the brightest minds in Tech City (it was at capacity before it even opened), it’s clear that people are feeling a strong pull towards working in these more sociable working environments.
Social Interaction
Today, we see tech giants like Google, Facebook and Dropbox leading the way as examples of companies with stimulating work spaces that encourage their employees to socialize and work alongside their colleagues in informal areas.
Entrepreneurs and tech startups who would normally not have the resources to recreate this kind of environment and office culture seek coworking spaces as a valuable alternative. Social interaction is at the heart these benefits, with Desk Mag’s second annual Global Coworking Survey finding that 84 percent of people go to coworking offices for the benefit of interaction with others.
For a new start-up with one or two employees, social interaction and encouragement is all-important. I know one lone working tech start-up who described his previous home working conditions as like being in ‘Solitary confinement’ – this was clearly no good at all for his motivation and sense of positivity!
Co-working spaces can deliver an environment that not only lets you surround yourself with people while you work, but provide a real community where collaboration and learning help propel your company forward.
Unexpected collaborations
A beautiful aspect of these co-working communities is that collaborations can come from the most unexpected places. I recently came across a tech public relations agency working in a shared office with an IT recruitment company, who after originally connecting over shared cups of tea in the kitchen, realised a few of the recruiter’s clients were tech start-ups looking for PR support – and a collaboration was established!
Inspiration
If you think back 20 or 30 years to office spaces of the ‘80s (think the classic 80’s films Working Girl, or Wall Street), the shut-off cubicles and harsh fluorescent lighting is such a stark contrast to how we work today. Co-working spaces and new offices are being designed and built with people in mind: open plan, sunshine filtering, brightly coloured and transparent spaces that truly encourage workers to “think outside the box.”
A large number of coworking spaces host events and programmes to inspire their members in the evenings, beyond their day to day interactions. I’ve seen talks from mindfulness companies, tech learning companies, to all-day hackathons and music sessions from up and coming artists.
Flexibility and Affordability
The reason why startups and entrepreneurs are able to dive into co-working communities and take advantage of these benefits? Affordable flexible contracts.
Most shared working spaces have a membership tier, starting with a basic level of entrance to a communal office, and adding on access to facilities such as meeting rooms, individual desks, private offices and event rooms. Affordable rates and flexible contractual conditions make coworking spaces an easy and relatively hassle free choice for tech startups and entrepreneurs.
Will the next £Billion company come from traditional top-down, hierarchical corporate space or will it be co-created in a more creative coworking space that facilitated collaborations between creative, smart, forward-thinking people?
