Coworking Labs

Study Says Traditional Office Becoming Extinct

***Update:  The report discussed below has been released***

Following on yesterday's post on corporate coworking, another GigaOm article looks at a study being produced by Regus and Unwired called called VWork: Winning Strategies at Work. 

The study appears to be much more optimistic than we are in terms of corporations quickly embracing coworking as an alternative to traditional office space.  Key quote from the article:

"So what we’re doing is aligning the idea of “buy/bring-your-own” which is beginning to get traction in the IT world, with the idea of just provisioning work, so that companies give their employers a stipend, a budget, and the budget is for all aspects of the provisioning of work to suit them and the way they work."

They are also suggesting that many workers will choose 3rd places instead of home to work:

"But if we see a huge change, a sea change, in the way that big corporates are working — if they do reduce their property footprint by 30 or 25 percent — we’ll see tens of thousands of new workers looking for someplace to work, especially in their communities, but that hasn’t yet been provided for."

I found it interesting that the word "coworking" is not mentioned.  It is alluded to in a quote on the quality and quantity of existing 3rd work places:

"You can see them meeting the needs of the freelancers, the contingent workers, who go in with their Macbook Airs and have a coffee and they’re online, but they don’t meet the confidentiality needs and other services needs that they will have to respond to if Fortune companies adopt third space."

The actual report is due out next week and we're looking forward to it - it sounds fascinating. 

The "Salesforce.com Effect" and Corporate Coworking

Interesting GigaOm article on the advantages of companies paying for or subsidizing the cost of employee use of coworking spaces. 

5 Benefits of Sponsoring Employee Coworking suggests these advantages:

1. coworking is like a non-stop trade show
2. coworking provides office structure without office stricture
3. coworking encourages work/life balance
4. coworking is creative
5. coworking is human

Our research leads us to believe larger corporations will eventually embrace coworking, but it will take time.  Almost all the corporate lawyers, HR  and facilities professionals we've interviewed have expressed concerns about encouraging employee coworking, with the security of confidential information being a key issue. 

Cost is also often mentioned, usually with a comment about Starbucks being free (at least for the company). 

Despite the lack of support from central groups, we expect departmental and business unit managers will increasingly allow employees to expense coworking facility costs - especially for employees that travel extensively.  The cost is too low and business logic too powerful for this not to happen. 

This "back door" use of coworking facilities will eventually lead to formalized policies and procedures for using 3rd party spaces at large corporations.  We call this the "Salesforce.com effect" because of their success bypassing central IT and purchasing groups and growing their cloud-based business by selling to end-users and department managers.