Month: November 2019

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.