Why co-working spaces will be the ‘new normal’

By Priyadarshi Nanu Pany*

When the unforeseen Covid-19 pandemic unnerved the world, it challenged the time-honoured and legacy workplace models. Organizations worldwide were swift to switch to remote working and Work from Home (WFH) mode as employee health and well-being topped their agenda. Lately, as the impact of the virulent pandemic weans off, companies have resumed Work from Office albeit tempered with flexible conditions. Hybrid or blended workplaces are gaining traction.

And with the growing appeal of flexi work, the tide is now skewed in favour of co-working spaces. A report jointly published by Boston Consulting Group and the IT industry body Nasscom found that about 65% of the employees surveyed would like to move to a Tier-2 or Tier-3 city. Living costs were about 30-50 per cent cheaper in such regions. The report stated that the cost of living in Surat was roughly 50 per cent lower than that in Mumbai.

The availability of coworking spaces near employees’ hometowns has benefited both organizations and employees. Workplaces are increasingly becoming more location agnostic. The moot point is not where we work but the way we work. An independent survey found that there are 18600 coworking spaces worldwide. According to these stats, working professionals want an environment with an amalgamation of skillsets from different professions under one roof.

What is fuelling the co-working space boom? India’s booming start-up ecosystem (next only to US and China) and the rising entrepreneurial wave are the clear drivers. Co-working spaces will see a rise in demand in the coming years, primarily driven by startups. According to a recent study by Colliers and CBRE Matrix, startups are expected to lease 29 million square feet from 2022-2024, a 1.3-fold increase over the period from 2019-2021. To illustrate, Smartworks, a private co-working space provider has seen scorching growth in the past six months, overshooting its demand in the past six years put together. The public sector too has gotten into developing co-working spaces, and to good effect. Happy Works, a co-working space introduced by the West Bengal Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation, is gaining currency among companies and individuals alike.

As opposed to conventional office structure, co-working spaces are a junction of minds where people make the most from cross pollination of ideas. Imbued with flexibility, autonomy and connectivity, a co-working space can be comfy and capacious with isolated or locked work pods, conference rooms and cafeteria. Co-working space is more creative and superior to WFH as the latter despite pleasing can have distractions that can hijack focus and might lessen productivity. And being a tech evangelist, I can claim that technology is helping in better management of spaces and operations and creating a superior experience for the occupants of flex work spaces.

Creating a co-working space is not just about offering a highly efficient and high-quality office experience but is redefining the office space, paving the way for the future. With a growing focus on productivity and well-being, co-working spaces are reaching larger audiences and widening their arc of influence. The market cap of the co-working industry is projected to rise from $29 billion now to $50 billion by 2028, a clear pointer to the employees’ preferences for maverick workplaces.

In the future, emerging technologies and disruptive platforms like the Metaverse will seamlessly merge physical and digital workplaces, dishing out more opportunities for developers of co-working spaces. This new merged work module will back the ‘anytime, anywhere work culture’. It is tough to guesstimate on the future of work but co-working spaces are here to pivot the future.

*The author is founder & CEO of Bhubaneswar-based CSM Technologies.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of Sambad English.