🎉 Coworking celebrations.
🌍 AfricaWorks turns 2 and wins best on continent award.
Gregoire Schwebig shares that, on their second anniversary, AfricaWorks has been awarded as the “best coworking space provider” in Africa.
It’s been tremendous to watch as they have launched 10 locations in 8 cities across the continent over the last 24 months.
🎂 Hub Adelaide turns 8!
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📰 Coworking updates.
🙏 Chain launches initiative to support local social enterprises.
Samit Chopra shares how WeWork are launching an initiative to give social enterprises across Southeast Asia complimentary or subsidised access to workspace, meeting rooms, events and mentorship.
This programme is open to NGOs and Social Enterprises in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
🔥 Coworking in Florida is heating up.
Michael Fenstein from Büro shares that their group have opened up a 7th location in South Florida, with their latest location in South Beach in Miami. They go on to share that the continued increase in demand comes from both the growing local appetites for flex and the influx of both companies and investors into the region.
🔎 How coworking is faring in Philadelphia.
Paige Gross takes a look at how coworking is faring, and in most cases thriving, in Philly.
The piece includes insights and comments from Alex Hillman of Indy Hall, Charlotte Lee of 76 Forward, John Heinz of CIC Philadelphia, Yotam Alroy and Josh Evans of Mindspace, Bond Collective and others.
🧐 25+ of the world’s most famous co’s workplace strategies.
The team at Hubble put together a list (which they are updating weekly) of how 25+ of the world’s most famous companies are approaching their future workplace strategies. We’ve covered many of these names in the newsletter before, but this is a good guide of who’s made public statements about going office-first, hybrid, or remote-first.
👩👦👦 Supporting Gender Equality for Working Parents through coworking.
The September 2021 Coworking IDEA challenge has been issued, and is facilitated by Shazia Mustafa, co-founder of Third Door.
🤔 10 questions for leaders who need to make office decisions.
Joff Sharpe from JLL Flex shares 10 questions that need to be answered before a workspace strategy can be explored fully.
Whilst most of the questions are for business leaders, some of them (say on safety-vs-liberty, flexibility, and experiences) that would be useful for coworking space operators and sales teams around the world to explore.
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💻 Coworking technology.
🇬🇧 App launches in London to enable drop-in access to space.
Paul Unger shares about Flow’s launch in London. The booking platform, led by serial proptech founder Mark Smukler, aims to provide an Uber-like experience for workspace (and other spaces). The mobile-first app is designed to provide immediacy and a frictionless experience, avoiding memberships or advanced bookings.
Excited to see new apps for enabling more on-demand usage of coworking & flex space.
🛡 Plug-and-play cyber security device launched for WFHers.
The security pros over at Palo Alto Networks have announced their new Okyo line of products.
These devices are plugged in, connected to a WiFi account and are designed to constantly scan and protect all connected devices from cyber attacks. What caught my attention here is the device’s ease of use, and that it’s focussed on both WFH and small business use-cases, preventing things like phishing, malware and ransomware attacks.
As WFH continues shifting into WFA, expect network & device security to become a big topic for coworking space operators.
🤓 7 smart office technologies for post-covid coworking spaces.
Satellite Deskworks share 7 smart technologies you may want to implement to help making welcoming back existing or new customers in a world of post-covid workspaces.
Coworking data.
🤯 15M+ US employees have left their jobs since April 2021.
McKinsey & Co share a new quarterly report, highlighting that a record number of employees have left (or are considering) leaving their jobs. In this report they share data learned from interviewing 5,774 employees across organizations in the UK, UK, Australia, Canada and Singapore.
They highlight a number of things including that companies who fumble their hybrid strategies (or don’t offer any at all) could see even attrition of even their most loyal employees.
I share this as flex workspaces across the world have an opportunity to help employers of all sizes switch from employee attrition to attraction, and in turn boost their own revenues and sustainability.
h/t this video by Ciaran Delaney.
📈 Searches for ‘coworking’ up 223%
No Office Work share a snapshot showing a huge spike in Google searches for “coworking” worldwide.
From checking out the Google Trends we’re all seeing a return in search volume from late 2019, and am expecting those numbers to be surpassed in the coming quarters.
🇻🇳 Majority of Gen Z support hybrid work.
Daan van Rossum shares some data from a recent survey of Gen Z in Vietnam, in which 69.8% support hybrid working. Always great to see what upcoming generations of employees and leaders think.
🇬🇧 Britain is going back to the office, report says.
Zach Douglas shares Orega‘s full Future of the Office report.
In short: the future is flexible – gone are the days when businesses are happy to sign long-term leases without considering the many alternatives.
Coworking market moves.
🇩🇪 German state offers coworking as option to employees.
The German Coworking Federation share that the state of Schleswig-Holstein are enabling their employees to access coworking spaces near their homes. The 3 month pilot is in partnership with Dataport and CoWorkLand eG, with the latter providing access to the spaces in their network.
🏢 East Coast landlord adds shared hospitality amenities.
Silverstein Properties have shared that they’ve rolled out a shared suite of safety and hospitality amenities for tenants and their employees to leverage. Drop-in workspace, cafes, lounges and office planning tech are available within the landlord’s proprietary app.
Keep an eye on this trend as more and more office landlords explore ways to make their buildings more sticky.
🏨 47 UK hotel locations added to flex workspace network.
Arnaud Mardegan from Othership (prev. WeCoffee) announced a partnership with Kew Green Hotels. This will make shared and private workspace in 47 of their hotels available for booking for members of the app’s community of employees and freelancers.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
Caleb Parker chats with James Lass about an investor’s perspective of the changes happening in flex and office markets.
Jamie Russo chats with Ben Wright about Upsuite‘s Q2 flex market data.
Bernie J Mitchell chats with Jenny Lowthrop about agile working and coworking.
Ceci Amador and Annie Rinker, from Hines, discuss what’s next for the office and CRE markets.
📆 Coworking events.
📸 Coworking + instagram Convo.
Sep 24. Coworking Convo dives into how coworking spaces can use Instagram to grow their memberships and revenues.
🗽 GCUC is back in NYC (and online).
Sep 27-29. GCUC returns for a hybrid event, based in both NYC or virtually online.
🙋♀️ September Coworking IDEA challenge discussion.
Sep 29. Join the Coworking IDEA discussion to run over what others did and learned from this month’s challenge.
🇪🇺 Rural Coworking across Europe.
Sep 30. The London Coworking Assembly are hosting a free event to discuss some of the challenges rural coworking space operators face -from finding (public) funding to the need to explain coworking and its value proposition all over again.
💼 Coworking jobs.
Find or post coworking jobs for free here.