🎉 Coworking celebrations.
🚀 Burbity Workspaces at Sullivan Valley Commons launched!
Wishing their team, and members, all the success in the world!
P.S. thanks for being long-time readers of this newsletter!
This Week is sponsored by…
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Coworking news & views.
📄 “How to sell coworking to your employer”
Jill Rywelski shares a PDF that Fueled Collective are using to help employees make the case to their employers for coworking memberships.
It includes how employees can determine what they need, get clear on their ask, and translate those needs into tangible solutions for their employers. They’ve even included a downloadable template. Love this!
💸 Remote work program brings $62M into local economy in 2021.
Ben Stewart shares how Tulsa’s remote work experiment was a multimillion dollar success, and today celebrates a 1,300+ member community who now call Tulsa home.
The program, called Tulsa Remote, ‘pays’ remote workers to move to the city with a $10,000 relocation stipend (and free coworking space) if they call the city home for at least 12 months. It is estimated to have contributed $62 million in new labor income to the local economy in 2021.
💰 Coworking co skips party to give $5k grant and annual membership.
Workbar have announced that as minority-owned businesses have been hit hard during the pandemic, one would be assisted with a $5,000 grant and an annual coworking membership.
Sarah Travers shares that these funds were being diverted from throwing their annual membership, instead opting to give back to their local community. Nicely done!
📚 New ebook on Rural Coworking added to the library.
The recent free ebook about Rural Coworking by Johanna Voll, Tobias Kremkau & Dr. Alexandra Schmied is now listed in the Coworking Library.
This publication is based on a virtual meeting of rural coworking experts from across Europe, which took place in late May 2021. Experts from Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland shared their experiences about the rural coworking development in their countries.
ICYMI: The Coworking Library is an open index of all the research into and around coworking.
🎒 The past, challenges and future of Lomads.
As the number of lomads (local nomads) continue to grow, Robert Kropp returns with a second article diving deeper into how this flexible work lifestyle could evolve in the future, and the implications for spaces and cities that host them.
👋 On creating coworking cultures that value inclusivity.
Kate Tattersfield summarizes last week’s panel discussion and shares how coworking spaces can help companies create a better equitable experience for their employees.
📜 Coworking megatrends for 2022.
Liz Elam from GCUC share their predictions for trends to watch in (and around) coworking in 2022.
Covered are: employee choice, branding, amenities, the reckoning for real estate, coliving, suburbia, culture, growth mindsets, M&A, black swans and boundaryless work.
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💻 Coworking technology.
🔗 Why integrations will be critical for flex spaces & their tech in 2022.
With this abundance of choice in tech options, the demand for different platforms to “talk to each other” is becoming a deal-breaker. In this piece for Syncaroo I dig into what that means for the platforms looking to help coworking and flex spaces thrive.
Looking back over the 68 previous newsletters and these recent market maps, the number of platforms a coworking space can use to manage, market and fill their spaces is skyrocketing.
📞 Proptech co upgrades voice service for coworking spaces.
technologywithin announced a major upgrade to their twiinvoice platform, including a new standalone app. The platform allows members to procure and manage phone numbers and services.
Auxiliary services, especially those that drive revenues are increasingly popular additions for both platforms and operators alike.
💬 Platform brings flex space booking into Slack
Tally Market have announced a Slack integration, bringing hot-desk, meeting room and private office bookings right into the popular messaging system used by companies around the world.
As platforms expand the ways in which end-users can discover and leverage flex spaces, I truly believe the ways in which a majority of the next million to join coworking spaces are still being cooked up, often in experiments like these.
🇨🇦 UK booking platform hops into Canadian market.
The team at NearU shared that they’ve just onboarded their first Canadian partner space, Startuptive in Toronto.
Expect to see more cross-Atlantic expansions as we dive into 2022, and corporations and teams lean into centralized access to collections of spaces.
Coworking data.
🇮🇳 71% of India’s 35M sqft of coworking is run by large operators.
MoneyControl reports that not only is India’s coworking market size expected to double over the next 5 years, but a vast majority of the available space is operated by large operators. The Workplaces of the Future report by ANAROCK, shares more insights into the coworking industry in the country.
Other numbers that caught my eye are that there are 370k seats in Tier 1 & 2 cities; and that Smartworks, Awfis and WeWork India lead the pack in number of seats (70k, 51k and 51k respectively).
h/t Shubham Vashisht
🚀 Demand for flex space in Latin America hits record levels
The Instant Group‘s recent Latin America Flex Market Review report. Focussed on Mexico City, Lima, Bogota & Buenos Aires, it predicts an 86% increase in demand by end of 2021.
This spike has been driven by rightsizing of real estate portfolios mainly by companies in consulting, technology and financial services. Warnings have however been issued that increased demand and competition could lead to shortages in desirable flex space.
h/t Frank Cottle
📊 Management software co releases FlexIndex benchmarks.
The team at OfficeRnD have released their first FlexIndex report.
In it (behind an email registration) they dig into data and trends for KPIs like Static Desk Occupancy, RevPAW (Revenue Per Available Workspace), Bookings Per Meeting Space, Average Booking Duration per Paid Meeting Space, Booking Revenue per Paid Meeting Space and Booking Revenue per Paid Resource against data from 2019.
🔻 37% reduction of in-person days worked per week for 60M workers.
Gallup share a data-filled post about research they carried out establish an over/under (aka a calculated bet) for how many US employees will NOT be returning to the office full time.
They calculated that 50% of the 125M people working FT jobs in the US could work remotely. Of those approx. 60M WFH-able employees 60% wanted a hybrid model with 1-4 days in the office per week, with 2-3 days being most common preference.
Their bet? “a tall office building in a big city where all desk jobs can be done remotely — on any given week — will have 37% fewer desks occupied than it did that same week in 2019.”
h/t Melanie Jones
Just how well are they doing?
Gabe Marans from Savills asks if WeWork is winning and digs into highlights from their preliminary November data.
The highlights include that the company’s global real estate portfolio included 756 locations in 38 countries, offering approx 913k workstations and 577k memberships (while consolidated numbers were 624 locations, 33 countries, 747k workstations and 458k memberships). Physical occupancy rate was up 2% from Oct to 61%. All Access memberships also up 3k to 41k and enterprise members accounting for 47% of total physical memberships.
Coworking market moves.
🇮🇪 Coworking space in Dublin reports 35% growth.
John Kennedy shares numbers and insights in ThinkBusiness from Andrew Lynch about Huckletree‘s growth in Dublin.
They now host 75 member businesses, up 20 companies over the last two months.
🇵🇹 Portuguese network plans to double in size next year.
IDEA Spaces share that they’re planning to expand from 3 locations to 6 over the next year. The next (4th) location will be in Lisbon, with more spaces bringing the network to a new city.
Another of their goals for 2022, is to generate over €1M in transactions between their members.
(Article in Portuguese)
🇹🇭 Franchise deal to brings 40 more flex spaces to Thailand.
Bangkok Post reports that Ratanakorn Asset have signed a 40-location franchise deal with IWG, to meet growing demand for flex space in Thailand.
Interestingly spaces can be developed everywhere except Bangkok and the adjoining provinces, where IWG has already opened 26 locations. 5 centers are planned to open in 2022, with at least 40 to opened over next 10 years.
h/t Giovanni Palavicini
📹 Coworking videos.
What Lucy’s grandad thinks about modern work perks.
Lucy Winter shares a TikTok where her grandad reviews some modern office perks.
Love the creativity, and hope it inspires you to explore some humorous marketing content in 2022.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
This edition of the Coworking Values Podcast is a recording of Coworking Europe’s recent panel: “How to Transform Diversity and Inclusion into a Driver of Growth”.
Jamie Russo and Molly Rose Speed discuss how virtual assistants can help operators and members of coworking spaces.
Recording of Mark Gilbreath‘s presentation at the Coworking Europe conference last week.
Replay discussion of Week 48 In Coworking ft Ashley Proctor, James Wahba, Iris Kavanagh, Gina Schreck and Amber Lawless.
📆 Coworking events.
📱 Discuss this newsletter.
Dec 10: Join fellow newsletter readers in a discussion about this week’s news, views, data, updates and trends they represent.
💬 Featured in Forbes Q&A: New twists in coworking.
Dec 14: Join Spark Coworking, The Cube and TechArtista in this Clubhouse Q&A around the recent Forbes‘ feature (see last week’s newsletter) on creative shifts within the coworking industry.
💼 Coworking jobs.
Find or post coworking jobs for free here.