Could Workspace Sharing Work for You?
How are you using your square footage? It’s easy to reply with statistics about employee density or office layout, but the truth is that many workplaces are wasting valuable square footage on employees who frequently travel or work from home. A workplace sharing strategy allows you to accommodate everyone while maximizing the use of your physical assets.
Smart Work Sharing Strategies
Which workplace sharing practice you use depends heavily on the current state of your organization. How many employees are typically working from your building on any given day, and how does that compare to the capacity your workplace is designed for? How many people work from home periodically or have to travel for work often? Could you downsize your real estate footprint or rent out your extra space if your offices were right-sized to the number of people working in them? Your answers to questions like these will determine if either or both of these space-sharing strategies will work for you.
Hot-desking,
also known as hoteling, gets rid of the concept of assigned desks entirely and requires employees to check out a workspace every day instead of having the same desk all the time. People who work in your office all or most of the time can choose whichever space type suits their mood that day, and in the meantime you’re not wasting too much empty space on people who aren’t using it. Keep a few extra workspaces for people who only visit the office periodically, and either rent out or sell the rest of the space you’ve freed up or turn it into something everyone in the office can use, like a collaborative space.
As an alternative, you could choose to assign desks to everyone who works in the office every day and leave a handful of free workspaces for others to check out as needed.
Shared workspaces
or coworking offices are off-site work environments that accommodate multiple people but are not owned by your organization. Coworking spaces are designed for collaboration and are a great option for startups that can’t afford their own real estate yet, while shared workspaces are offices that are designed to be used by individuals from many different organizations – think remote workers who don’t want to spend all day at home. These places offer typical office amenities and often require a membership. If you have a lot of remote workers and a large amount of underused space, it may be less expensive to pay for shared workspace memberships and downsize your building portfolio. Google opts for this space type in several locations to cut down on its considerable real estate costs.
Is It a Good Fit?
Before you downsize your physical footprint, think critically about whether workspace sharing is the right choice for your organization. The best collaborations often start by accident when colleagues bump into each other in office social spaces, so if your business depends on people from different departments collaborating frequently, you may not want to make it harder to facilitate those conversations. Coworking spaces can help encourage that kind of collaboration, but they really only pay off if you have enough employees who live near the same coworking office to justify renting space or buying memberships. Examine the pros and cons of every alternative space option thoroughly to find the best fit for your business – having the right amount of space is worth the work.
Are you ready to discuss your workspace needs? If so, call Craig Byers at Q4 Real Estate at 319-294-3339.
