When coworking spaces first started cropping up, they were pretty niche. Now, however, they’re everywhere, with more and more businesses all over the world choosing a coworking space, like Circle Hub, as their base. This trend shows no signs of slowing down, indicating that coworking spaces may well indeed play an even bigger role in the future for businesses.
What Are Coworking Spaces?
Coworking spaces are environments where people from different companies come together to share an office space. A monthly fee gives you unlimited access to that space, as well as to various amenities.
Why would you want your business to join a coworking space? Because it can offer up a number of advantages, many of them significant enough to propel you to success. Let’s take a closer look at some of those benefits:
Gives Legitimacy to Startups and Small Businesses
If you’re running a startup or a small business, you’ll know all too well how difficult it can be to earn some credibility. People are rightfully distrustful of new companies. Running your business from your kitchen table isn’t going to help to make you seem like a legitimate business.
Choose a coworking space as your base and that all changes. Many coworking spaces will offer a virtual office service, which enables you to use their high-end street address as your business mailing address. With Circle Hub, this means that our prestigious address in California can be splashed across your business cards, website, marketing material, and more. This will immediately give your business a bit more credibility.
Our virtual office service also includes mail handling. Any mail that your business receives will be held until you’re able to collect it. If you can’t, we can either forward it onward or send it to you digitally.
Reduced Costs
Running a business is expensive, which is why businesses take cost-saving measures as much as possible. As a result, coworking spaces have become even more appealing…
For businesses both big and small, coworking spaces work out to be extremely cost-effective. You won’t have to fork over for an office space of your own and will instead simply pay a monthly fee for yourself and any employees.
In addition to that upfront saving, you also won’t need to worry about other overheads. WiFi, electricity, water, a cleaning service…not only will you be able to avoid all of that extra admin, but those costs will all be taken care of by your coworking space. They provide furniture, office equipment, and refreshments too, all of which would have otherwise eaten away at your bank balance.
Flexible Contracts Mean Easy Scalability
Scalability is so important for a business, especially in the early stages. If your business experiences sudden growth, you need to be able to adapt to that. However, if you’ve signed a five-year lease for a dingy yet costly two-person office space, how are you going to do that?
So many businesses have found themselves caught out by burdensome, long-term lease agreements. They’re extremely limiting at a time when a business needs to be fully flexible.
However, this is where coworking spaces step in. Just about every coworking space offers flexible monthly contracts that you can start and stop at any time. To scale up, simply purchase a membership for your new team members.
Of course, this means that you can easily scale down too. If you overestimated how many employees you would need at the beginning, you can simply end their membership at the end of the month rather than being stuck with an expensive oversized office that you’ve signed a three-year lease for.
Employees Feel Valued
Even if you have several employees, paying for their membership at a coworking space still works out to be more cost-effective than leasing your own office space. Plus, being a member of a coworking space makes an employee feel more valued than working from a traditional office space would.
How? Because that coworking membership likely comes with a few perks. For example, at Circle Hub, all of our members have access to our onsite fitness center. If any of your employees are currently paying for a gym membership, they’ll be able to give that up. Not only will this save them some money but having a gym in the same building as where you work is so much more convenient! Even better, from an employer’s point of view, encouraging employees to work out really pays off. Research shows that regular exercise significantly boosts work performance. It leads to a boost in creativity, higher energy levels, and improved focus.
An Increase in Productivity
It goes without saying that businesses want to be as productive as possible. Turns out, this is something else that coworking spaces can help with. Research has found that 73% of people who work at a coworking space find themselves being so much more productive.
Why is this? It comes down to a few different reasons. Firstly, coworking spaces tend to offer up very inspiring environments. Natural light, open spaces, lush greenery, and aesthetically pleasing interiors all help people to feel as motivated as possible.
The flexible working environment helps with this too. Rather than being confined to a single cubicle for the entire day, a coworking space encourages you to move around and work from different areas. Whether an employee is struggling with burnout, writer’s block, or a tricky problem-solving task, this flexibility can make a huge difference.
Access to Amenities
While the most basic coworking spaces will offer up a desk, a chair, and not much else, most coworking spaces provide a range of different amenities. Take Circle Hub, for example. We have on-site printing and scanning services for businesses to make the most of, along with high-speed WiFi. You’ll also find free refreshments in our kitchen and break area, as well as the onsite gym we mentioned earlier. There’s even a game room for members to relax in too.
All of those amenities are included in the monthly fee that our members pay. However, there are also a few other facilities that members can access for a small extra fee. Our private offices are one, with these office suites kitted out with everything that you could need when bringing your team together. Whether you need to hold an important confidential meeting or want to host a team brainstorming session, open-plan workspaces aren’t suitable for every task, but this is where our private offices pick up the slack.
Our largest office spaces can accommodate a team of five. However, if you have more employees than that, we also have conference rooms available. The largest can hold up to 16 people, making it ideal if your team has been quickly expanding.
Although you’ll need to pay extra for these facilities, they’re priced by the hour. This means that they’re still extremely cost-effective, even for a small business.
Networking Opportunities and Onsite Talent
Speaking of expanding your team…
This can be difficult for a small business to do, simply because finding the right team members isn’t an easy task. Whether you’re looking for new employees on online job boards, by word of mouth, or any other way, the process can be extremely time-consuming.
Again, coworking spaces change this. You’ll no longer have to waste hours hunting for a qualified web designer, branding expert, or IT specialist. Instead, you’ll be surrounded by these various professionals each time you set foot in your coworking space. Simply strike up a few casual conversations each day with the people around you and you’re likely to make some incredibly useful connections.
Networking becomes even easier if you’re at a coworking space that encourages this. At Circle Hub, we host regular events that our members can attend free of charge. Although you can network throughout the day too, these events bring people together in a setting that’s perfect for making new connections.
Impresses Clients
Are you a small business that’s trying to impress new clients? A coworking space can help with this…
How? Well, we’ve already discussed how a coworking space makes a new business seem more legitimate. However, this is not only in the eyes of potential customers but also when it comes to new clients. Research confirms that a coworking space creates a positive impression of a business in a new client’s eyes, meaning that working with that client in the future becomes a much bigger possibility.
People tend to view businesses as energetic and forward-thinking when they base themselves out of a coworking space. They immediately seem modern, relevant, and innovative – the perfect attributes for new clients to align themselves with.
Flexible Working Hours
When a business leases out a more traditional office space, they usually have to adhere to certain business hours. This isn’t necessarily the business’ choice. Instead, those restrictions are put in place due to building/insurance regulations.
In some cases, these set hours may not matter. However, in others, they can be extremely restricting. Whether your team has an important project to complete that requires a few late nights or you’re dealing with clients on the other side of the world, meaning that you need to work at odd hours because of time differences, not having access to your office whenever you need it can be very problematic.
This issue is the same at some coworking places too. However, at others, including Circle Hub, members enjoy 24/7 access. Turn up whenever you want, whether this may be early in the morning before the sun comes up or late at night once the workspaces have quietened down for the day. Either way, you won’t have any working hour limitations affecting how you run your business. This can make all the difference when it comes to your success.
Professional and Modern Coworking Spaces From Circle Hub
Once you understand the various advantages offered by coworking spaces, it’s easy to see why so many experts are predicting that this working model will soon be the future for businesses. If you would like to jump on board and sign your business up for a coworking space too, click here to book a tour of Circle Hub’s coworking spaces to see whether we would be a good fit for you.