Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Andrew Slaughter started work (usually 15 minutes), battling morning traffic on his way to the LabCorp offices in Research Triangle Park in Durham, North Carolina. 40 minutes). There, as a proposal manager, he was racking his brain about lab services. Costs associated with clinical trials.
Slaughter worked from home during the pandemic, but wanted to get back to the office. It was for good reason. His wife runs a small kindergarten in her home, with an average of 10 children a day playing in the sandbox and chatting at snack time. and join the singalong.
“It can be a little distracting,” said Mr. Slaughter, huddled at a small desk in his bedroom. “You can’t go anywhere in the house.”
When LabCorp told employees they were going back to the office, Mr. Slaughter realized he had no office to return to, and his work went “fully remote.” Like many companies, LabCorp cut back on office space because employees were found to be just as efficient, and often happier, working from home.
Wanting to escape the chaos of his home during the day, Slaughter found a solution in a coworking space. This concept was nothing new. The space was already popular as an inexpensive way to rent an office by splitting the cost of snacks, office equipment and industrial internet connectivity. But as the pandemic has pushed more people to work from home, coworking spaces have grown, albeit small, among refugees like Slaughter, who crave a busy office away from the fridges, couches, TVs and hustle and bustle of kindergarteners. has become a market. ” bus wheels. ”
Mr. Slaughter chose american undergroundis located inside a former bank on Main Street in downtown Durham. American Underground not only offers office facilities, but also social activities such as bingo nights, happy hours, and a snack and coffee bar. (He pays $150 a month for the space.) But the highlight for Mr. Slaughter has been the change in the way he commute.
“Instead of driving to Research Triangle Park, you can bike here,” Slaughter said.
There is a fair amount of research on coworking spaces, but most of it focuses on the main users: entrepreneurs. But Travis Howell, an assistant professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the University of California, Irvine, conducted interviews with the American Underground to study these entrepreneurs and found refugee corporate employees instead. continued.
“It was frustrating at first,” he says. “They weren’t who I wanted them to be, so I just left them out of my research. But then I realized this was becoming a reality.”
Howell said his research is focused on these workers, who have grown to account for 16 percent of U.S. subway occupants. (other collaborative organizations, Regus and Hugealso reported similar numbers. )
His research is ongoing, but entrepreneurs and retired office workers seem to prefer coworking spaces for different but overlapping reasons.
Entrepreneurs and start-ups appreciate that co-working spaces offer short-term rentals, that their setups feign legitimacy, and that they can ask people from other companies for advice. I’m here. However, office workers receive such benefits through their companies and, where advice is available, from their colleagues. What displaced people lack is community. “They could have worked from home,” Howell said. “But it is for the people that they voluntarily gather in the coworking space.”
Defining what constitutes a community can be difficult. In companies, people are bound together (sometimes through common animosity) by their departments, projects, or bosses. The random nature of coworking spaces allows for ‘self-selection’, which often colors the culture of a particular location.
For example, coworking locations are diligence This hotel in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights has caught the attention of young parents. Industrias co-founder Jamie Hodali said people bond over issues related to children and “things in common outside of work” like dog ownership and bowling. .
Some coworking spaces are dedicated to specific groups, such as: herahaboperating 7 offices dedicated to women entrepreneurs, and Blackbird Housea space dedicated to women of color in Culver City, California, with plans to expand to six other cities.
The physical space of the organization called the Blackbird House Blackbird Collectiveopened in 2019 and has found a lucrative niche hosting high-profile speakers such as Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams and Alfre Woodard. “It’s no small thing to be among a group of peers who understand the journey of being in an empty room with no one like you,” said company founder Brigid Coulter Cheadle. Told. Blackbird House has struggled due to the pandemic, but has achieved operating profit since reopening, she said. “We are looking at how we can scale this up.”
What I love most about the coworking community is that you can ignore it. Jonathan Newby, chief product designer for his San Francisco-based Zendesk Labs, makes it easy to build software that connects businesses and customers from home. He has his house to himself during his day, only distracted by the little noises of the city and his pet dog.
“I’m a bit of a homebody, but I do too much of everything,” Newby said. So while he frequents the Industrias site in Indianapolis, he doesn’t know the names of the people there, regardless of the other workers, and he never goes to a pizza party. Say no. Nevertheless, his creativity is fueled by the other workers who bustle around him. “Even if I don’t know them, it’s nice to be close to them,” he said. “It’s the atmosphere.”
But Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who has studied remote workers, said that mood hasn’t permeated investors. Investors see coworking spaces not necessarily in terms of occupancy or popularity, but as general property holdings in an oversupplied office market. The shrinking commercial scale that lured employees to co-working spaces has resulted in surplus office space and depreciating values.
Between November 2021 and January 2022, about 45% of U.S. workers aged 24 to 64 were working remotely, according to Dr. Bloom’s research. Most worked from home, but a third was split roughly evenly between coworking spaces, public places like coffee shops and libraries, and friends’ homes.
However, in some cases, the cost of remote work, which typically ranges from $50 per day to $400 per month, is not being paid out of employees’ pockets. Newby works at his Zendesk, which offers telecommuters a fee to use their home office or coworking space. “The business benefit is being able to deliver a great employee experience, which has improved our ability to attract and retain diverse talent,” said Niamh McGarty, Senior Director of Human Resources at Zendesk. I’m here.
And Zendesk isn’t the only company encouraging employees to embrace a coworking lifestyle. When Jennifer Verbush, a pension administrator for MetLife Life, worked from her home in Citrus Park, Fla., her two children, ages 2 and 5, always made her day. have interfered with
“They need attention,” she said. “What used to be an 8-hour work day has become a 12-13 hour work day.”
When she was able to return to the office, she was reluctant to make the 30-40 minute commute to a sterile office park in the suburbs. She wondered whether she should consider her career change. Instead, she was allowed to join a co-working space in Ybor City near her home.
“Now instead of working in a big office in the suburbs where you need a car to go everywhere, you can take a little trolley to Tampa,” she said. She happily continues her work.
