Coworking spaces are known for the opportunities they provide for the budding entrepreneurs, freelancers, or even companies in providing a space where they can think and work together as a team and enjoy the harvest of the hard work they put in. Here we are discussing Coworking Space Positive Impact on our community, so go through the post for more details.
Coworking spaces provide a lot of advantages over the normal office spaces for their members. At the same time, these spaces can contribute a lot to the community around them.
Having to contribute to the local community in return will create a positive impact on the coworking spaces too. This will help you create your own identity among the local community, which will help you in the business too.
What Are Coworking Spaces
Table of Contents
Coworking spaces are a new type of business space that has grown in popularity a lot over the last few years. Traditionally, businesses strived to have their own defined area for their staff to work in, an area that was all this. This was because it demonstrated the power and that the business was serious.
The issue with owning or renting a dedicated office space for your business is that its costs can be pretty high, resulting in many businesses losing out on money. These days, many business owners are now more money conscious, looking for any way to save money. This is where coworking spaces come in.
A coworking space is self-explanatory: it’s a shared office space used by many businesses, not just a single one. Shared office space is usually open plan and can be used on a first-come, first-serve basis, or businesses can book out rooms and areas as and when they need it.
These office solutions are perfect for businesses with a lot of remote staff and don’t require their workers to be in one location a lot, and instead can be used when they need to all come together to share ideas or conduct a meeting. These types of office spaces are a lot cheaper to use, as you’re not paying for anything like power, water, or other utilities. Instead, you simply rent the rooms and location for the amount of time you’re there, which can really help save costs.
However, coworking spaces don’t just have to be good solutions for your business. When used effectively, a coworking space can also aid the local community where it’s located. In fact, a coworking space can quickly become a hub location within a community, conducting many different things and solutions that can be of benefit. Here’s a look at all the ways a coworking space can positively impact a local community.
How coworking space can contribute to the local community?
Here are the best ways a coworking space can contribute to the local community around them in the best possible ways.
1. Building up a connection with the local society
It is quite obvious that you might have the branches of your coworking space built in a pretty much accessible area with other local businesses running around you. It can be a cafe, a hotel service, a taxi centre etc.
It is important that you have a warm relationship with them as it can be helpful in many ways. Referring your customers to those shops can help them.
Whenever you need a bulk hand sanitiser order or you need to get cupcakes and coffee for all your staff, get it done from the local shops that surround you. When your client needs a taxi service to drop his client at the airport, seek help from your neighbour taxi centre. Decorate and make it fresh inside your coworking space with the flowers bought from the florist next door.
These will definitely bring a smile on their face and they will help you in your hardest times with a very fair discount or a new client with the mouth publicity they can provide you with.
2. Mentorship and scholarships
Just look at your coworking space. You see very skilled and highly talented industrial experts working day in and out!
Why don’t you make the best out of this opportunity?
Students in schools and colleges who are really involved and interested in learning about the cutting edge technology would really like to have a mentorship directly from the experts in your coworking space in their own niche of technology involved.
Either you can team up with already existing mentorship programmes and give an opportunity for your clients in the coworking spaces for being mentors.
Also Read: What is the Conversion Rate and how can you improve it?
Or you can start one on your own. Maybe, if the programmes are successful, you can try giving incentives to the mentors in the form of extra coffee, extra meeting hours or reduction in the rent.
This can also be used to provide internship opportunities for graduates or people undergoing gradation after detailed discussions with the teams working in your coworking spaces. They will get an extra worker to get their works done and the interns will get exposure.
Scholarships can also be given to students who are brilliant academically and practically in technology, which can be decided based on a hackathon, for example, at the coworking space itself.
3. To work with NGOs in times of crisis
There are different situations that happen in and around the society that will have the potential for help from a coworking space like yours.
Teaming up with NGOs and getting to help them to make the process a little better and lighter is the best thing you can do when it comes to lending a hand for the society.
You can conduct clothes and food drives where you ask the public to bring clothes and food that they want to donate at your coworking space, where you can sort them to send them to the needy with the help of the organisations. Many coworking space in Bangalore are tied up with the NGO and contribute regularly with them
You can provide free space at your coworking space for the NGOs to work during the hour of need.
4. Happy hours
Happy hours are one of the most interesting initiatives that a coworking space can take up. This will be the hour where they can either host a stand-up comedy show or a talent show event or do a free party.
The ticket price can be used to make donations, or buy survival packets for the homeless. The packets can be sorted by the coworking management or the workers of coworking space. This can imbibe the feeling of inclusion among the workers too.
A happy hour can also help improve the morale of those working with you in the coworking space. Giving them a social event to look forward to and enjoy with their colleges can create a better relationship between everyone and make your business feel more comfortable relaxed.
Another way to create a relaxed environment with staff that you trust is to give them access to the coworking space outside of work hours. This is a great idea as it provides your workers with a space to continue their work if they feel inclined to do so out of hours, which can help make your business more productive. In addition, if your coworking space has access to IT equipment and the internet, then your staff can also use the space for training and education, which can help them become better workers for you.
By giving them access to the space, you can encourage them to use it as a place to engage with online courses that can teach them new knowledge that can help them in the role. People can learn many different things online, ranging from short courses to help them learn a specific skill to full-on University courses, such as online family nurse practitioner programs.
5. Skill training workshops
If the locality has a high number of unemployed citizens, you can make arrangements for a skill training workshop that will help them get a job with decent pay.
You can use your connections in the community to provide them with opportunities. This can help them find a career and make their lives safe and secure for the future.
A good idea in this regard is to put a local advert out for an intern to work within your business. Here, you can welcome a student to your coworking space and give them an education into how your business works as well as provide them with important life experience that can help them get a career in the future.
You decide what you get the intern to do, but they can be useful aids in completing simple tasks as well as organizing the workspace. If they have a good experience with you, there’s also the option of offering full-time employment once their intern period is over.
6. Being a connector
Being a coworking space owner, you would definitely know what your clients are dealing with, and what your clients would need.
When they need resources that can be satisfied within the coworking space, you will be able to connect them with the talents within the space.
When they need help from outside, you can be a connector to the local community outside, helping them grow with their local business too.
Many new businesses have sprouted up since the pandemic, and a lot of those still operate from the owner’s home. This is good, as it shows that the community around you is working hard to boost their income; however, working from home can be a challenge, especially when trying to meet clients. It can look unprofessional to invite business partners and buyers to your home, meaning that those in the community who are operating a business from home need to find a good space to conduct meetings, interviews, and other in-person engagements.
Offering your coworking space to these businesses can really help the community, as it provides them a secure, neutral, and professional location where they can conduct their business and meet. Meeting in a place like this gives a great impression and can be the difference between a business in the local community getting a client and them not.
If you’re going to offer this to people in your community, just make sure that the business they’re operating isn’t a direct competitor with you, as you can be shooting yourself in the foot by helping a business that is competing for your customers grow.
There have been many coworking spaces that have put their foot forward at times of crisis and when they had to bring in their touch of fortune to the local community.
The coworking spaces that opened their doors for the public to take shelter and to pray in times of flood and crisis is one among the tales that coworking spaces have contributed to bringing a happy smile on the people.
A coworking space is a right example of a mix of societies where people dwell in their works without the worries of differentiation and harmony. With different cultures getting together, the lessons of co-existence and the necessity of the same are explained with the coworking space culture. The same sets as an example to the society outside.
Coworking spaces have great potential in creating a positive impact on the local community if used to the right potential. Involving in any of the local engagements will help you build on your social initiative side too. Doing this can help improve your reputation and make you appear more conscious and socially active, making people more inclined to support you, as they know that supporting your business will also support the community.
Coworking spaces are set to become more and more normalized in the future, especially as more businesses become remote, and the need for a dedicated office location becomes less of a necessity. These spaces can be wonderful not just for your business but for the community, and now because of this article, you’re more aware of all that can be done to make a shared working space a great aid to the community.
