Co-working has been the ‘It’ workplace trend for quite some time now. By the end of the new year, nearly 1.2 million people worldwide will have worked in a co-working space. Enabled by mass mobility, it’s now forcing many of us to rethink the role of the traditional office building and ask the question ‘what’s the future for the office in a co-working world?’.
Collaborative technologies, the arrival of new generations in the workforce and the idea that work can happen anywhere and at any time have all flipped the ‘traditional office’ on its head – regardless of the industry. By 2020, there will be 26,000 co-working locations with 3.8 million members, their arrival acting as the catalyst for a willingness to experiment and try new things, places, or more specifically, places to work.
That said, co-working has further reinforced what most people knew all along: there is still a need for collaboration, community, choice and connectivity amongst workers. With 79% of co-workers claiming that co-working spaces are more than just a ‘co-working space’. This highlights that it’s no longer good enough to just give people toys in the office, and honestly, it no longer interests them. Workers today are more interested in what they can achieve within their career at an organisation and what they actually need to do their job. How organisations and building owners incorporate a diversity of experiences, communities, activities and lifestyles in the office to meet these changing employee needs is the future.
As co-working and the need for collaboration, community, choice and connectivity amongst employees grows, the traditional building model will need to evolve to be more flexible than ever before. It is predicted that 93% of companies will explore hiring a blended workforce with freelancers and employees in the near future, highlighting that business leaders are finally realising that the new liquid workforce can become their new competitive advantage.