The aspirations of workers as well as the expectations of employers have therefore changed significantly in recent years. Many employees want to work from home; others want to work outside company headquarters but with other people.
As a specialist in human resources management and sociology of work, I have been researching coworking spaces for the past five years and have identified the main sources of interest and success of these places.
Coworking areas, fab labs and living labs are also called third places. A third place is neutral (neither at home nor at the employer’s office), open to all, with free and unrestricted access (especially with regard to activities). It should facilitate conversations and meetings and should also provide meeting rooms and space for coffee breaks, lunch, and dinner. Ideally, the space should be regularly used by the same users.
A coworking space allows its users to share the same place with the type of equipment that can be found in an office (photocopier, printer, scanner). Workers can use this equipment and share expenses in exchange for weekly or monthly rental fees.
Some coworking spaces bring together particular categories of workers, in the same sector or with professional links. The principle of a coworking space is to rent working space, which helps to reduce costs, but also to encourage networking and exchange of ideas.
Coworking spaces can be used by people who want a more professional business address than a home to receive their clients. In addition, they can often have a large meeting room, providing a more formal setting for meetings.
A coworking space can stimulate creativity, innovation, initiative, and a sense of belonging to the same community, but this is not always the case. In fact, exchanges and collaboration seem to be easier between self-employed workers than with employees of the same company, who sometimes tend to stay with each other in a coworking space. On the other hand, exchanges can often be helped by the presence of a facilitator.
Coworking spaces are therefore diversified and create opportunities for collaboration, but also certain challenges (profitability, development of exchanges). In any case, interest in this type of space is present in all major cities in the world and also in many small regional towns. This is clearly a new way of working, with the possibility of fostering exchanges, collaboration, and networking.
Analysis
This article was particularly helpful for me because it broke down what a coworking space is, what it can do, how it can be used, and some issues that can come with them. When we first started this project, I did not truly understand what a coworking space was, but this article broke it down in much simpler terms. This is a great article for anyone to use and understand how coworking spaces can benefit them.
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-coworking-demystified-world-revolution.html
