The spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) around the world is shaking the different concerns when it comes to managing the business. As the situation is evolving day by day, many are uncertain of what may unfold in the coming days. Most establishments are closed nowadays because of the quarantine, the question comes, how can coworking spaces operate in this pandemic crisis? How can space owners cope with the crisis and support employees? This article will discuss shortly how coworking space owners can ensure a safer place for their members today and the incoming days.

What is Coronavirus?

As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), it is an infectious disease caused by a new virus that had not been previously identified in humans. The virus causes respiratory illness (like the flu) with symptoms such as a cough, fever, and in more severe cases, pneumonia. People can protect themselves by washing their hands frequently and avoiding touching their faces.

Since there is no current vaccine yet to prevent coronavirus, here are common ways to reduce the risk of being infected:

• Clean hands frequently with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water
• Cover nose and mouth when coughing and sneezing with a tissue or flexed elbow
• Avoid close contact (1 meter or 3 feet) with anyone with cold or flu-like symptoms

Listed below are the best ways on how you can make your coworking space a safer place for your members and staff.

Raise Awareness of COVID-19

First and foremost, to be effective as a leader, you need to be well-informed of what is happening around your city and the state of the people. Through this, you will get a grasp of what are the main concerns and how you can be of help.

To avoid panics and useless rumors, make sure that your members and staff know what is COVID-19 disease and what rules they should follow to be protected. This way, they’re not ignorant and they can also share this via word-of-mouth to their families and friends and be a good contributor to the city.

Use all channels of available communication

There’s a lot of digital ways to be effective in communicating important information to your members and staff. It is expected that you should be creating awareness posts on your active social media account, send email newsletters, or via your internal communication channel. Through this, people that are involved in your coworking space are assured that you are doing what you can for them to be safe in this time of crisis. To always stay up to date, bring your own wifi card to any co-working space you visit. Also, they can be well-informed in recognizing a coronavirus case and ask whether a guest has visited countries with registered cases of COVID-19. This is the time to show that in your coworking space, it is a community where everyone belongs. 

Sanitize the Workspace Regularly

This is the best time to be obsessive about cleanliness and hygiene. Keeping your workspace clean is the key. Besides, if the members know that you’re doing this, they will feel safe that you are doing what you can that is around your scope. 

• Make sure that your space is clean and hygienic
• All types of equipment that are frequently touched by people must be disinfected regularly
• Clean all common meeting places such as conference rooms, phone booths, cafe, and mobile tablets at the reception.
• Intensify cleaning routines by hiring cleaning staff to continuously disinfect all surfaces. 
• Assign someone from your staff to check the temperature using thermometers upon entering of people in your space.
• Ask everyone to use an antiseptic when entering the location.
• Equip your coworking space with sanitary equipment such as sanitizers, closed bins, surgery masks, liquid soap, paper tissues, and medicines. 
• Remind everyone to wash their hands regularly and thoroughly. Provide posters that promote handwashing especially that is near the handwashing area of your space. 
• Equip all popular areas with hand sanitizers and handwashing manuals.

Arrange the Workspace Properly

This means that you have to ensure that the meeting rooms and common places are not crammed with people. Properly arrange the distance of seats at your coworking space not less than one (1) meter. Limit the number of people and the bookings for your meeting rooms. All of these need adjustments to ensure the safety of health for everyone. As space owners, you need to communicate these ahead to your members so they will know what to expect around your coworking space. Also, orient the staff to be firm and well-informed of these rules so everyone is synchronized in implementing it.

Cancel Community Events

Well, this is not something new since almost all are canceling their events to prevent further outbreak. It may negatively impact your business, but this is a wise action to protect your members until the situation improves in a good way.

Wise actions on canceling community events:

1. Face-to-face meetup or important gathering can be replaced by a teleconference or online meetup.
2. Replace regular meetings with email communication.
3. Inform members to stop for a while on inviting guests especially from foreign places.
4. Stop hosting events from outside the company.
5. Regularly inform members and staff about the precautions that must be followed.

Promote Remote Workstyle

It would be great to promote and educate your members on remote workstyle by showing it to them as an example.

• Encourage your members to communicate via video calls and emails instead of personal meetings
• Advice members to use a booking platform instead of making reservations at the reception.
• Instruct members and employees with a mild cough or low-grade fever (37.3 C or more) must stay at home.
• Limit the number of staff and reduce working hours.
• Don’t stop communicating and create awareness for people if they need to stay at home. For your staff, you can count these as sick-leave and still be compensated.
• Advice your staff to minimize the use of public transport.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, everyone is facing this crisis together, so it will be best to communicate transparently and implement rules firmly. If you must need to close your coworking space for this month, then know that it is the right thing to do. Be part of creating difference and make this decision together with your staff and members. To know more about what businesses must do, visit this site. We hope that this article has helped in pointing out the important action plans that you can implement to your coworking space.

Expanding a coworking space takes research, determination, and timing. Though the idea may be exciting, it also comes with plenty of questions, doubts, and concerns. Ask yourself and your team if opening a second coworking space is the way to expand or what if there are still better options. In this article, it discusses important factors to consider before making a decision in expanding a coworking space.

What are the Different Options for Expansion

Expanding within your location

Expanding within your location can be easier since you don’t have to go through the process of looking for a new location, negotiating, and starting the whole from scratch. The other thing that you can consider is to expand your team. But, in most cases, this won’t lead to many more operational challenges. 

For members who are looking for a bigger space, they won’t have to look for another location. Instead, you’ll be able to provide them with a bigger space in the same location. However, one of the disadvantages is that you won’t be able to tap into the demand for a new location. It is sure that in different locations, there will be a new group of people who are possible prospects for membership.

Relocating to a New Building / Location

This is another option if the current building where your business is doesn’t meet your needs. It could also be that you have experienced unfavorable lease terms, a bad relationship with the landowner, or insufficient demand in the area. Whatever the reason may be, if your building doesn’t suit your needs, then it’s time to move somewhere else.

Moving to a new location entails a process since you’ll not only be moving your members but also your property and assets. You might lose some of them in the process of transferring to a new location. On the good side, relocating to a new location includes a chance to start again with any design or office layout. It also opens for opportunities to improve your coworking product that would meet the needs of your coworking community and your business. 

Expanding with a Second Coworking Space

Opening a second coworking space is beneficial for your members and to your business as well. The number one reason is that you can tap into the demand of a neighborhood, city, or region. The more the demand is, the more members there will be. And the more members leads to more revenue. Who wouldn’t want that to happen right? Another reason is if you have other business functions that may require a different type of space, then that could be your motivating factor to expand to an additional location.

What are the Important Factors to Consider for Expansion

Now that you have decided to expand your coworking space, it is important to analyze key data to check if you are ready to grow. You may have good intentions to scale your business, but it matters also to analyze the physical, operational, financial, and other aspects of the business. Here are the data that have to analyze before making a final decision to expand your business:

Analyze your Business Performance

The first step in the analysis is to examine how your business is currently performing in terms of marketing, finance, and real estate.

Marketing and Sales

You don’t need to see a dramatic increase in the number of inquiries from new prospects and how many of these inquiries are converted to members. But instead, you should look for steady growth. There is no specific number for a good rating because this depends on your business, the effort you put into marketing, and your sales process. Spend some time to understand the quality of inquiries you received from phone, web, referral, lead generation, email, etc. Few questions to ask that will help you – What are the typical types of members or company that comes for a tour? Do these different “types” of prospects convert to members better than others?

Finance

It makes sense to measure the income your business is generating, but also determine how much of your physical products (private offices, conference room, dedicated desks, and others) that contributes to monthly recurring revenue. You always need to know how much you are getting out of your business and when you expect to break even and start generating profits.

Real Estate

If you see strong demand with high occupancy to manage your inventory or there’s a lot of inquiries that are not able to be met because your inventory is insufficient, then there would be an indicator that you’re ready to scale your business. Also, meeting rooms are not only a necessity for members, but can also be a tool to attract fresh traffic to your space. You need to know how much your meeting rooms are being used, which ones perform the best, and what their peak hours are. 

 

Analyze your Operations

What are the processes/procedures do you currently have and how many of these can be automated? Are they scalable? Would you need to establish new procedures? With a single location, you might not have documented every process because it’s not that crucial. However, with a second location, the workload is bigger and extensive so setting processes will save you a lot of time and effort. The process will allow you to establish consistency in delivering your service. You don’t have to over-complicate the steps for every single thing in your coworking space.

Here are some important areas that you need to establish procedures with.

Sales

Having a clear procedure on how you would approach inquiries and steps to go through a potential client will be helpful. Aside from it saves time and effort, it will be easy to pass down when you train your staff especially if you’re not around. Other than that, it will help to analyze which part of the sales process can be improved.

Onboarding

Everything on how you welcome new members, how to communicate with them, what documents to share with them should be structured and documented well. This will make it easy to replicate the practice in your second coworking space and train other team members.

Communication

The more the number of your members grows, the more you need to be consistent with your communication patterns in particular situations. This can include your onboarding process, email inquiries, group announcement, etc.

Day-to-Day Duties

The everyday routine seems to be something normal and simple, but to provide a consistent experience for your members and make it easier for you and your staff, then setting up a process will help. It’s’ those little things if done properly and with consistency will instill a positive impact especially on the customer experience. Having clear and well-communicated procedures is beneficial especially if you are expanding your coworking space to maintain consistency in the services offered.

Analyze your Local Environment

In expanding your coworking space, investigating the local market and business environment matters. It will help you find out how favorable the market is and establishes connections with communities before launching your space. 

You can start by researching locally in the region you find appealing to have your second coworking space and find out what the business environment is like. Explore the place, its people, visit establishments and randomly chat with people to find out what their needs are and how you can be of value to them. If you see that there’s no unmet demand, then it might not be your place. You have to make sure that your next location is in a market that has enough demand for an additional coworking space.

Other than that, if you have no competitors in the area you’re planning to open, that should be a red flag and ask on why is that the case. Is the area small and not developed yet? If you have competitors in your place, learn more about them. What do they offer, what audience do they target, and what are their price ranges? Try to find information as much as possible and see if they’re willing to share bits of it.

Conclusion

Every coworking space is different and challenges in growth differ depending on each space. We hope that this article has given a guide bais essentials to consider first before making a decision. If you plan to start a coworking space, check out this blog for helpful tips.

New Years’ resolutions will always be a trend at the beginning of the year. Memberships to gyms, book clubs, yoga classes, and other healthy and worthwhile lifestyles will begin to be trending by Jan 1. Well, that would be most likely the same as coworking spaces. You may have observed that there’s a growth in your membership at the start of January or in the coming days. That’s why you have to invest in creative marketing ideas as you welcome New year since this is a common trend for many people. 

There are various reasons why freelancers, entrepreneurs, and employees would choose to start coworking at the start of the year. Let’s enumerate a few of their basic reasons.

Sense of Community

Most of the time they experience isolation especially on working at home. And being part of a team answers that deep longing for a sense of belongingness. Coworking offers a readily available network of like-minded professionals to collaborate or enjoy a chat over a cup of coffee during breaks after work. 

Work and Life balance

Coworking helps you separate your home from your office. Anyone can relate that working at home can cause familiarity and neglect over some important responsibilities. Getting out of the house for work helps them moving throughout the day. Coworking space offers flexibility to provide just the right feel of work it might require for a day. 

Creative outlet and Collaboration

Coworking environments are designed to inspire creativity and innovation. It provides unique setup and amenities for professionals, entrepreneurs, and freelancers to execute their projects from start to finish. Not just that, but able to collaborate and connect with like-minded people to help them with their workload. It relieves them from psychological pressure and improves their business because of connections. 

Here are some tips that you can explore and try for your coworking space:

Make them feel welcome

Hospitality is a common thing, however, it is often overlooked in the business world, especially if there’s an overfamiliarity of the process. Introduce your new members to your staff and the existing coworking members. On the Orientation, space owners should be there to accompany new members not only the community manager of the space. In this way, they’ll feel welcome and have that sense of being valued. Make sure they got to interact with the existing members so that when they come to work on the next day, they have already connected inside. You can be creative in welcoming them like announcing it on your community feed or have a random welcome dinner for them together with the community. 

Make them understand all of your services and amenities

When onboarding your new members, communicate to them the value that your coworking space can give to their business and in their professional work and skills. Dedicate ample time to show them your different amenities and the services they can expect from your space. Aside from that, bring in testimonies from other members who have thrived in your coworking space. Let them know that you have different events that foster skills and collaboration with like-minded people. They need to know all these things so that there’s something that they can look forward to in the coming months.

Drive engagement with other coworking members

Help the new members to engage with your coworking members. Plan activities with your Community Manager to ensure that new members are not set aside, but instead, they’ll feel that they are part of the community already in their first week of joining. Good rapport with your members can translate into member satisfaction, then all the more increasing the chances of retention.

Provide organized classes

Providing organized training courses for higher-level skills like SEO, graphic design, leadership courses or anything that can be beneficial for everyone, can not only become a strong marketing asset but also can add value for your members. You can offer special discounts on some members who have been with your space for like 3-6 months. 

Do a Feedback survey to know their needs

After a month of joining in your space, your new members would most likely able to identify the things that they need and love about your space. Send them a feedback survey so you can further assess their needs on how you can tailor-fit it to your coworking solution. You can have a casual discussion with them on how they’re experiencing so far; if they have some concerns or proposals that they want to bring up. Through this, you’re showing them that you value their experience and you want them to experience the best in being part of the coworking community. 

Conclusion

There are many ways to retain your members, but what matters most is that they can experience a sense of belongingness in your coworking space. If they’re able to experience that, even if there are some gaps on your services, they will still stay. After all, coworking gives them an opportunity to meet useful contacts, form friendships, and try a different environment. By implementing these simple tips, you can make your new coworking members continue toward building and growing their community. 

 

 

 

 

 

Instagram is a medium to connect with new members, peers, influencers, and partnerships in the community. By participating and hosting own events, you are able to create a presence on Instagram. This is not only for coworking spaces who are established already, but it is really encouraged for startup businesses to have their business Instagram account. 

It’s a basic understanding that social media is an effective advertising channel for coworking spaces. However, there are coworking spaces that do not have any Instagram presence and have failed in using Instagram. Thus, in this article, we shall enumerate basic ways on how to effectively use Instagram in promoting your coworking space. 

Express Emotions

In the posting, make sure your posts have emotions on it that your followers may be able to feel what you are trying to convey. Coworking space is about creating connections. Your followers and visitors should be able to see themselves working and being part of your coworking space. Just as how you want to build a community within your space, then you should capture this feeling so that people would sign up. You can use filters on your photos, targeted messaging, and happy colors to achieve this. The pictures you want to show and the message you want to relay would represent what you want people to feel about your coworking space. Capture the sincerity of your coworking space. You don’t want to showcase something, but it is not evident in your space.

Post-High-Quality Photos

Instagram is highly visual in nature and people are attracted right away on posts with good quality photos. So if you are posting photos, make sure that you use high-quality photos since this will speak of what kind of quality you are as a coworking space. If people see that you’re using high-quality photos, then this will reciprocate a good impression to them and would be interested in visiting your space. You should hire a professional photographer if you are promoting a certain event or campaign. An hour of professional photography will provide you with enough content for days. Let the photographer know what you are trying to achieve and let them work on it. You would need to invest in good photography if you want to capture the attention of your potential customers. 

Interact With Community Members

Aside from the content, another strategy is to engage with other members in the coworking community. Like and comment on the content posted by others will most likely create a feeling of community. You can also follow other small businesses around your area. Supporting local small business especially those in the creative and events industry is good for you since they may refer clients or it can be a good opportunity for future partnerships. 

Consistency in your Content

You do not need to post every day or post exactly X days apart from each other. But you need to post every 2-3 days though. Imagine if a potential member will visit your profile and the last post was 2 weeks ago. The problem here is that your viewers might think that you are not active on Instagram and engaging with your members. Posting new content is one of the best ways to grow your account and doing more often will ensure consistent growth. Part of being consistent is to have a content strategy that will guide how you post content on your page. Vary your posts and make sure that you have more community and inspirational posts than promotional ones. In this way, you are adding value to your audience and this makes them more receptive to your promotional messages.

Build Relationship with Audience

Make sure that you are positively engaging with your audience on Instagram. When they comment on your post asking for more information, you need to reply as quickly as possible so they will not lose interest. If your budget may allow, hire a social media manager to manage your social media accounts and at the same time answer queries on time especially if you are not available. If you have your own generated blog posts, then you can always update Bio link in your Instagram company profile with the most current blog posts. Posting stories would be a great way to engage your audience since it shares moments that truly represent your space.

Conclusion

Instagram is really an effective tool in communicating about your coworking space. In order to be effective in using Instagram, it entails an investment of time, effort, and resources. But the good thing about Instagram, this is a platform where people visited it most and they’re highly engaged with. Always make Instagram as part of your content marketing strategy in promoting your coworking space. 

There are different coworking events and all of these solidify and highlight the core values of any coworking environment. So, as a coworking space, how do you want people to perceive you? That will somehow reflect on the type of coworking events you host.

Now the Christmas season is coming up, do you have an event planned for your members? How did you prepare for it? Did it stress you out? When managing a coworking space, it is essential to hosting events since it builds camaraderie and community. At the same time, it’s a marketing tool to attract potential members to your coworking space. In this blog, we will give you a few tips on what to prepare for organizing an event. 

Content

First things first is content. In planning for an event, what is your content? What kind of content do you plan to give out to your members who will attend the event. Make sure that your content is aligned to your strategy, company values, philosophy, and community interest of course. As an example in this holiday season, you may want to host an event that tackles the importance of giving back this Christmas and putting it into action by going around to your community. 

If you plan to host a workshop or an informative discussion, you may want to pay attention to the quality of the speaker of the facilitator – make sure that he is well-versed on the topic, interactive, and well-spoken. 

Communication and Promotion

Before the Event

There’ll be a lot of marketing preparations to be done before the event. This is to ensure that everyone, especially your target audience will be well-updated of the upcoming event. Publish the event on your website, in your events section, calendar, or blog post and spread the word. Don’t forget the power of word-of-mouth. 

Another way is to use social media in communicating and promoting your event. This can make your event viral and it allows you to reach out to a larger audience, as well as keep attendees reminded and up-to-date as the event gets closer. 

Last but not least, make sure that the organizer, speaker, facilitators, or artists taking part in the event are influential. Check their followers and following count on social media. Through them, they can already give an impact on their followers as well. 

During the Event

Now the event is up, make a live video on Facebook or Instagram and go streaming on Twitter. Let your online community know what is happening in your coworking space at that time. Take good points and capture good photos from the event and you can tweet it or create an Instagram story. 

After the Event

Compile all the photos taken and make a nice video. If you’re not an expert, you can look for someone professional in doing this. After all, this will be distributed to your website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 

Sponsors and Partnership

A well-managed partnership can provide a financial reward, open up marketing channels, promote your space, and accelerate sales. It will be better to take this opportunity to grow your event. The key to getting the right collaboration is you have to seek prospects who have vested interest in the event topic you have prepared and to your target audience. Once you have identified it, both of you have a create a benefits package that will both add value to your event and their business.

With event sponsorship, they pay money to be associated with your coworking space. They are to place their brand, product, or service in front of your audience. They will pay for this access and opportunity to promote or sell their latest offerings. Understand the sponsor’s needs and goals and design a creative proposal to discuss with them. There is no secret formula for this, but you have to understand your sponsor, target audience, and sponsorship objectives. 

Production

Production is the hardest part of an event. You should create a checklist of all the materials needed, rentals of equipment, food, drinks, music, audio, lighting, and every event logistics that is needed. It may vary accordingly. There will be some events that you won’t need such a big production. In production, you have to manage the budget well, have good knowledge of the components needed to make the event successful, and have direct connections with suppliers. Overall, set up everything to make the venue a great place for an event.

That’s it! Are you ready to host your event? 

 

There are many ways to increase the visibility and success of your coworking space. One of the best ways is to build a local partnership of nearby businesses in your community that increases the sense of community both in your workspace and neighborhood. This partnership is a collection of complementary services, discounts, free products that you can offer to your members provided by third parties. Businesses such as restaurants, coffee shops, and gyms are obvious choices for partnership. 

As you initiate and cultivate local partnerships, you are:

Providing added value to your members

Imagine the excitement of your members that they have something to look forward to becoming part of your coworking space. You can showcase these perks like discounts, promos, and rewards, Other than that, you can include it as part of their Membership Plan benefits. For instance, a member can avail of a Plan that offers free access to the gym with the corresponding fee that is attached already to the Membership Plan. 

Increasing your revenue

With the partnerships, this increases the chances of profitability since its a good marketing strategy for member retention and inviting potential members. It may be a risk for a start, however, you can mitigate the risk by surveying first the culture of your coworking environment on what kind of local partnership suits best. 

Offering free advertising for your space and the local business as well

Isn’t this a good avenue for advertising? You are not just promoting your coworking space, but also, the local business benefits from the promotion you are offering to your members. More people will come to know about their business, and more will visit them. With the influence of social media, both the coworking space and the local business benefits the influx of more customers. 

How to Build Local Partnerships

Identify the business to partner with

A partnership is essentially important since it can boost profit and brand recognition. For example, if you partner with spas, you can get your members discounts and rewards as perks of joining the space. This can encourage your members to join and invite other potential members. At the same time, you are also showing support to the spas or any local businesses nearby with free marketing and more customers. There may be tons of businesses that you can partner with, but not all of them are suited to your coworking space. How do you know the right one for your coworking space? Ask your local members so you will get informed feedback from them.

• What local businesses they frequently visit
• Which business draws the best local crowds
• What do guests mention when they visit the space

With these questions, you can identify the right business that is favorable to your members.

Does it fit into your Vision as a company

You may receive a lot of requests for partnerships and most of it sounds great, however, you should pay attention to the bigger picture to not cause friction with your coworking space’s original purpose. Ask yourself these questions:

• How does the partnership support my vision
• Does it support my business’ objectives and goals
• Does it reflect and foster our values  

Make the deal

Once there’s a verbal agreement on the proposed partnership, it’s time to draft the details of the agreement. Make sure to include the duration of the promotion, the type, and value of products or services provided, and any discounts that will be applied. Include other relevant details if there’s promotion to be done via flyers, email or social media on the said partnerships. Be sure to consult with your attorney about the terms of the contract. 

Spread the good news

Now the deal is sealed and you’re ready to grow your business with this partnership. Just like in doing your events, you can promote these by showing it to your website, sending emails to members, give welcoming leaflets, and announce it on your members’ platform.

In building partnerships, consider that your members will benefit from a variety of promotions. Reach out to restaurants of different cuisines, including gyms that offer a different type of programs, beauty salon, and spas that gives out a different style of service and many other options that you can choose from. With these, your members will surely enjoy the new and fun opportunities that wait for them. 

Final Words

In conclusion, your members are getting most of the privileges and perks of being part of your coworking space as you partner with local businesses. That is why a local partnership is a great coworking strategy. With a successful partnership strategy, you would see the benefits mentioned above in your coworking space. Do you think local partnership is a good business strategy? 

If you’re in a leadership position either in an office or a small business, how you manage the staff can make or break the business. Happy and motivated staff will bring your business to success, while lazy and unmotivated ones will bring you down. In short, your staff are the ones making your goal a reality and your job as the space owner or manager is to make sure you effectively manage them.

It isn’t easy to manage different people with different motivations, views on work, and attitude. There is no right management style since it varies in a different environment. However, there are wrong ways to manage people that can be prevented. This article will help you on how to effectively manage your team in the coworking space.

But first, let’s discuss common challenges in managing the staff in the coworking space.

• Distractions
  

  – Working in a coworking space involves collaboration, networking, and interactions which is different in an office setting. Because of this, there is a possibility that it might compromise the productivity of your staff.

• Social Interactions
  

  – The ideal situation in a coworking space is that everyone would get along perfectly, so it is expected that staff is to socially interactive. However, this could cause to lose focus from other operational and administrative work inside the coworking space.

• Time Schedule
  

  – Schedule may vary among your workers in the coworking space and also the factor that coworking presents a sense of working freely inside not time-bounded unlike in the office setting. This might cause compromises on the attendance of your staff, especially if it’s not monitored well.

Different Ways to Manage your Staff

Provide a Sense of Community

• It will be great to organize extra activities like happy hours, fun days, team lunches or dinners to develop stronger bonds outside the office. These social activities can boost collaboration and teamwork. Ask feedback from your staff about what activities they’d like to do, then assign someone to organize weekly and monthly activities away from the office. As a space owner, you might ask why you go to this extreme? Because this will make your staff inspired to work and also the staff who bonds after work is more likely to respect and trust each other. 
• Team building allows your staff to improve and develop problem-solving skills, communication, creativity, time management, and productivity. Be sure to stick to your social activities plans to create trust among your staff.

Engage in business branding awareness

• Promote your brand within the workspace to constantly remind your staff about the brand identity you are standing for. Find ways to remind staff of your brand identity and its values. You can give your staff business cards with their names and your company logo to give them a sense of ownership and belongingness. Also, you may want your staff to wear uniforms on certain days like a branded t-shirt or cap from the company. If you plan to do this, including your staff in the decision-making process of the design of your uniforms to build team spirit. 
• Your coworking space could be labeled with your logo, with signage, posters, and printed chair covers. Such branding efforts can go a long way in encouraging your staff to be proud of the coworking space. And once this communicated organically to your staff, they can communicate this easily to the members of your coworking space.

Data Sharing

• Data sharing in the coworking space will motivate your employees to share their progress and be on the same page with everyone. The goal here is to allow your staff to work together in achieving better decision making. Here are some ideas on how to initiate better sharing of ideas:

1. Blogs – Encourages your staff to share ideas on the trending topic and what kind of content to include
2. Deadlines and Project sharing – Manage your content like Slack allows your staff to view each others’ deadline sand completed projects, which results in encouraging them to complete their assignments and projects.

Manage privacy, noise, and interruptions

• Managing privacy can be a headache especially coworking spaces can be noisy and disorganized if it is not managed well. Be proactive in managing the noise and interruptions for your staff. Encourage them to use noise-canceling headphones if they are easily distracted by the noise while working. Also, as they use earphones, remind them to keep their noise down when communicating. They should be aware of each they can come in. Encourage your staff to send emails or messages to each other before approaching a coworker or fellow team members. A phone call can be made to ask permission first before entering a coworker’s personal space.

Counseling

• Offering counseling will help to minimize and resolve conflict. Investing in a counselor will keep your employees happy and healthy, especially when they have someone to talk to outside the organization. 

Final Words

Coworking space can help your team thrive if you allow them too. Support your staff with digital tools to help them share, communicate, and collaborate without delay and friction. These different ways to manage your space is just a glimpse of other possibilities that you can do for your staff. Don’t forget to listen and ask questions to your staff, to initiate a dialogue that can foster a mutually beneficial environment. Hopefully that you can apply this to your coworking space. 

 

The people helping you run your coworking space are the backbone of the business. Without manpower, it is impossible to run a business. They also represent your company and are the ones interacting with members daily. Therefore, it is important to have the right people in your space. 

To do this, you have to decide how many staff you’re going to need and what are their specific positions. With so many different things going around in a coworking space, what are the necessary positions that you need to hire to improve the overall performance? Make sure that these are aligned according to the needs of your space based on your assessment. From there, you can create your job descriptions to guide you in finding qualified people. 

Here are the key positions that you should hire:

Operations Team

The Operations team is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the coworking space. These people are working behind the scenes to ensure that all things run smoothly in the space. This includes the Operations Manager and the Operations Coordinator. The responsibilities of the team include:

• Ensure daily logistics of the space are taken cared of
• Manage communication with third-party services such as cleaning and outside vendors for food and supplies
• Oversees and tracks the progress of long-term projects
• Coordinates the development of the team
• Develops and redefines operations procedures

Member Management Team

A coworking space is successful if it continues to attract potential more members. The proper management of the members and events that fosters member relationship is the role of the Member Management team. The head of this team is the Community Manager. For larger spaces, then you might want to add an Assistant Community Manager. The Member Management team is the employees where they hold the most customer interactions daily. The responsibilities of the team include:

• Creating a fun and hospital coworking environment
• Engaging with members, getting feedback and communicating with the Operations team to improve members’ experience
• Ushers guests, potential members and assist in tours
• Event planning, coordinating, and hosting
• Resolve members request and complaints
• Opening and closing the space
• Tidying of common areas

Sales and Marketing Team

To have an increasing number of potential members, the Marketing team is responsible for creating a vibe that attracts new members and thinks of best practices to retain existing members. The Marketing Manager should be well updated on the different marketing strategies and trends in the coworking space industry. You can hire only one Marketing Manager that will manage marketing activities, however, you can add more once you see that is fitting to the situation. The responsibilities of the team include:

• Planning and executing of marketing strategies
• Digital marketing strategies
• Build social media presence and grow an online community
• Implement specific marketing KPIs to track progress
• Coordinate with Community Manager for the coworking space events
• Scout for possible partnerships with local business

Final Words

All the teams work together hand-in-hand to ensure the operation, member management, and marketing side of the coworking space are at their best performance. If one loses its arm, the other departments will be affected as well. As the space owner, you have the leadership role to guide the space to its fullest potential. You don’t just leave the team on their plans, but you have to be visible and updated on their plans and implementation. Through working with them, you’ll be able to look for ways of improvement and expansion. There are other positions that you may add but we have provided here the essential positions that you need for your coworking space. Check out our new feature on Coworkify, wherein multiple owners can manage your space.

 

Considering the work nature and rising number of freelancers nowadays, a coworking space is what they need instead of coffee offices or homes. It’s a perfect place for them to stay productive without leaving their freedom as a freelancer. Many would like to work at home, but who would agree that working at home would compromise productivity. For this reason, freelancers should look for a good place to work to keep them motivated and avoid unnecessary distractions.

Even though freelancers aren’t working directly with other people, the good thing is that they’re still around other people. Your coworking space should have this sense of community for them to be involved in and look forward always as they visit your space. If freelancers can work either at home or at coffee shops, then as space owners, how can you attract them to work on your coworking space? Here are some ways to do it.

Offer Diverse Membership Packages

Many freelancers are doing their jobs part-time only. For this reason, your membership package should represent part-time options to allow flexibility. You can offer daily passes or present a limited amount of days each month when they can work in your space.

Make Google as your Marketing Tool

List your coworking space on Google. Include the opening hours, your space phone number, email and website details and allow your members to add their photos of the venue in the Google listing. This would help to build awareness and gain an online presence for your space. By creating an Adword campaign, you are reaching potential customers who are interested in coworking space.

Offer a Free Trial

Allow potential customers to spend one day at your space for free. This will give them a chance to have on-hand experience working in your space. At the same time, this will draw more prospective members.

Create a Referral Program

Offer discounts to members who bring their acquaintances and you’ll be amazed how useful this tactic is. You’ll be surprised that a percentage of these people are freelancers who are looking for space or just curious about how a coworking space environment might be. In any type of business, word of mouth is still the most effective delivery channel.

Social Media Presence

Create a social media account on Instagram and/or Facebook and put posts regularly with good quality photos or videos relevant to your space. Social media influence is very helpful in attracting potential members. Posting some of your services and the people inside your space will certainly gain an audience from prospective members. Also, be active in engaging with comments and answering inquiries to reflect on how engaging your activity on social media.

Host Useful Events

Host fun social events and practical workshops for non-members and you’ll see an influx of new members. In organizing an event, keep in mind that the sense of community matters in coworking space. Have events that encourage collaboration and networking among other coworkers from different industries. 

Partner with Local Business

Partner with restaurants, coffee shops, and fitness centers to offer your members special discounts at these venues. This way you both advertise your coworking space and these establishments will benefit as well.

Summary

Freelancers who work better in non-standard hours have the freedom to choose which place to work. Coworking space is not their only option. As space owner, you should market your coworking space with a good strategy. Be sure that the amenities you advertise are available and functional for their needs. Let your place promote community where they can be a part of, especially if they are not regular members of the space.