To work or not to work? That's really not the question. The question is where to work.
Employers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, The Washington Post, The New York Times and even Congress have ordered employees to work from home, and institutions like Harvard and Duke have led the world of higher education to move to online classes for the foreseeable future.
There has never been a larger or more urgent experiment in remote working and learning than we have right now, thanks to COVAD-19. We find ourselves standing on a knife's edge. The flexible workspace industry, which has already experienced significant growth and expansion could now been thrown into hyper drive. More remote working is good for the industry, but if no one shows up in communal public spaces – that’s a serious problem.
“The virus could act as a game-changer for remote work.” —Prithwiraj Choudhury, professor, Harvard Business School.
I have been asked many times over the past five years what the biggest threat is to the growth and sustainability of coworking. Skeptics have pointed to recession and think members will evaporate at the first whiff of economic downturn. I have countered that the bigger threat is full employment. This gig economy and the last economic recession are credited with jumpstarting the coworking trend in its current iteration. The truth is, none of us guessed that the resilience of this new work model would be showcased by a global pandemic.
The coronavirus is triggering a grand experiment: Remote work and remote learning have long been buzzwords, but the sudden switch to telecommuting en masse has the potential to accelerate shifts in how work is conducted and the way we think about it." — Erica Pandey, Axios
At this moment, we have very little reliable data to indicate that people are staying away from coworking spaces. Some anecdotal examples exist of facilities seeing increased requests for use of meeting rooms by new or non-members who have been sent home by their employers. We won’t know if mass membership cancellation will happen for another thirty days or more. If there is an increase of membership cancellations, this is likely to occur at the individual, or part-time (known in the industry as a Flex member) member levels. Small and medium-sized enterprises, and corporate enterprise users who have longer minimum membership terms and longer planning horizons, are unlikely to abandon space en masse.
Once the chaos subsides and we are able to get reliable data on how the virus is spreading, who is sick, and better understand the true health risk and concerns, we all be able to get back to conducting our lives without the fear of coronavirus lurking around every corner.
When that happens and we have a better handle on the scope and scale of the risk, remote working will have become an even more accepted and widely used tool for office workers and their employers.
In the meantime, stay tuned to this channel for more late-breaking news. Call or email anytime to discuss further or map out remote work strategies. And most of all: WASH YOUR HANDS!
About Christopher Campagna
Christopher Campagna pioneers flexible workspace alternatives in the marketplace, both for commercial real estate managers, developers and brokers, and for SMEs seeking modern solutions. As the founder of Braddock Commercial Real Estate Solutions, an asset management, development and brokerage business, and co-founder of a co-working operating company, Christopher positions commercial real estate in Alexandria, Virginia for the future. Vision and passion fuel this entrepreneurial thought leader, as does his rich experience: a three-decade legacy of providing office space solutions to small and medium-sized businesses, tenure with a prominent global real estate firm, co-managing a local family-owned real estate company, and expertise in real estate appraisal. Campagna is a member of the Forbes Real Estate Council, the Global Workspace Association Advisory Board, and a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business National Cohort at Babson College.
For more information, contact Christopher Campagna at 202-669-3909 or cmc@braddockcommercial.com.
#workbetter #dobetter #bebetter #authenticAVA #futureofworkspace #washyourhands