The flexible short-term painting spaces of corporations such as WeWork, Spaces and Regus were once hailed as the long term of the office, as more and more people turned to new businesses, freelancers and on-site paintings that allowed them to paint from anywhere. with only an intermittent desire for offices.
As the concept matured, giant corporations moved to take up some of the space, unloading empty buildings and expensive rents from their balance sheets. At WeWork, the Companies department accounted for more than 50% of its core profit for the first time this quarter this year.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. Many corporations rushed to set up remote work and others have other workplace configurations thanks to physical distance protocols.
WeWork has particularly reduced the ability of shared spaces to foster distance, filling all other offices in shared spaces once presented as network crucibles. Large halls were reduced to 18 seats of 25, while smaller lounges saw their occupancy reduced to six in 10, or 4 out of six. The capacity of the assembly rooms has also been halved, according to the company’s guide.
WeWork Canada vice-president Stephen Tapp said that despite capacity cuts, the company has not seen a dent in sales because the enterprise business involves other companies who manage their own capacity — and in many cases need additional space to spread out their employees.
Colin Scarlett, executive vice-president of Colliers Canada, said he has had several clients move to smaller head offices, but supplement with client-facing flex space from a co-working company.
“To choose and move to a smaller or potentially larger space, there is a capital charge detail in this: you have to build walls, place carpets, buy furniture. If you move into a coworking company, the coworking company spends all that money on you,” Scarlett said.
Canadian corporate coworking workhaus in the past was aimed at corporations with four to 12 employees, without a dominant corporate culture in Workhaus shared spaces. Unfortunately, some of those upstarts simply can’t stay in the workplace, even in a small shared space.
“Like other coworking spaces, a major challenge is that we assume the entire exposure of the lease in the long term. And in return, we’re offering completely flexible leasing conditions,” said Ryan Speers, Workhaus’ spouse and leading chief operating officer. “New businesses and small businesses have been severely affected … we saw a significant and very significant drop in revenue as soon as the lockout came into force.”
Speers said it makes sense that larger companies may cancel their long-term leases downtown, and instead rotate staffers in and out of smaller, flexible workspaces like Workhaus, which now offers services for the COVID-19 era such as scheduling desk availability and collecting information for contact tracing.
But even before COVID-19, coworking spaces were not easy to exploit. WeWork was wasting money and cutting 20% of its workforce in 2019. The pandemic has also clouded many seductive facets of the past of coworking spaces: crowded urban centers, open-concept shared floor plans, and social and educational events.
CBRE studies estimated that between late 2017 and 2019, there was a 79% increase in the number of square feet spent on coworking in Canada; however, two players, WeWork and IWG, own approximately 60% of the Canadian market. Training
This massive scale only matters more as other people repaint on a pandemic, said Wayne Berger, executive director of Toronto-based IWG Americas, which operates Spaces and Regus.
“We see corporations turning to their painters and giving them roles,” Berger said. “Employees are involved in the use of public transportation and seek to discover what the word back to school looks like. Workers can’t fully determine what their schedule is like, and there are also other degrees of convenience to return to an urban center… we see very strong demand in the suburbs and also in places like Regina, (Ontario cities) Barrie, Oakville, Mississauga, Markham, Hamilton (and BC’s) Burnaby, Richmond. This provides other people showing paintings closer to where they are. »
As collaborative workspaces become increasingly corporate, independent small businesses, such as Toronto’s The Workaround, are positioning themselves as local businesses that provide more protection and intellectual fitness benefits to others who don’t need to be exposed to giant or crowded shared spaces where contagion can simply spread.
“The good fortune of coworking will be in the niches (coworking spaces),” said Amanda Munday, founder and CEO of The Workaround. “It’s like a gym. I’m a little worried about going back to a big corporate gym where you don’t know who’s coming to the door. But I’m in a position to go back to my local studio, because those are the same 10 other people I see all the time in the neighborhood.”
A main pre-COVID promotion point for corporate transit offices, used through more than 700 people since the company’s opening in 2018. The offices were ideal for other people who had a giant deadline and who needed a few weeks of concentration here or there. Array said Amanda Munday, whose clientele was addressing marketing specialists who needed on-site child care.
Despite the huge number of parents running under siege, locked up at home and eager to have a workplace and colleagues to communicate with the pandemic, this style of “shared desk” is no longer feasible. The workaround had to be transferred to monthly workplace subscriptions that can only be used through members of the same household.
“We all know it’s more unlikely to paint from home, it’s difficult with two parents running, a crisis by anyone’s definition,” Munday said.