242. 2022 Coworking Predictions from Industry Thought Leaders
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Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
TRANSCRIPTION
242. 2022 Coworking Predictions from Industry Thought Leaders
00:00:01 Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host coworking space owner and trend expert, Jamie Russo. Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. Thank you. Or once again for joining me, we have a special episode in store for you.
00:00:39 We asked five leaders in various industry roles to share their perspectives on what 2022 will look like for Coworking and the broader space as a service industry. It, as we know is evolving rapidly post COVID. So we wanted to reach out to folks who are involved in the industry in different roles and have different perspectives to have them share what they think 2022 has in store for us.
00:01:12 So we reached out to Kane Willmott CEO of IQ office or across Canada, Nicole Vasquez Deskpass co-founder and chief people, officer Laurent Dhollande, CEO of Pacific Workplaces and CEO of CloudVO Kayley DiCicco enterprise account solutions for expansive and Hector Kolonas co-founder of Syncaroo. So stay tuned, you'll hear from each of them as they share their perspectives on what's in store for us for 2022.
00:01:45 Hi, my name is Kane Willmott. I'm the co-founder and CEO of IQ offices. We run co-working spaces across Canada. We have locations in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal. I've been involved with the global workspace association. Since the very beginning, I sat on the board and also act as president for a couple of years for the association as well,
00:02:03 wanted to give my predictions for 2022. What we are seeing now towards the end of 2021 is a lot of the large companies starting to come off the sidelines, saw them kicking tires towards the beginning of, of 2021 and through the summer. And now we're starting to see more transactions actually happening. So I anticipate that we're going to start to see more and more demand from the enterprise clients.
00:02:27 I'm also seeing a number of groups that have let go of their leases or did short one term renewals at that are now looking at Coworking as they don't want to go back into their old office spaces, nor do they want to look at signing a long-term lease. So we have a number of examples where large requirements, a hundred desks and above are looking at ourselves and only other coworking spaces.
00:02:51 So traditional landlords aren't even seeing these guys. So I think that what we're going to see as coworking operators in 2022 is significant increase in demand where we're getting clients from traditional office space. Whereas we used to really kind of drive from the Coworking ecosystem of companies that were already familiar with Coworking and H and how it's all put together. So as operators, I think one of the things that we're going to need to focus on is that education piece and showing people the differences between a traditional office and Coworking,
00:03:23 how it all works, making them super comfortable with it and helping them through the process of transitioning. So I anticipate that 2022 is going to be a great year fingers crossed. And that's what we're seeing are on our end. I'm interested to see what other people are predicting as well. Hi everyone, Nicole Vasquez co-founder and chief people, officer that's fast. We are a hybrid work solution for companies with remote and distributed teams.
00:03:51 And we are revolutionizing the way that humans work by giving companies and their employees, the freedom to choose where they get their work done. Here's what we at desk pass see for the flex Coworking industry in 2022 on the people operations front, my specialty newly remote companies will struggle with managing remote employees and company culture, and must be intentional in order to retain and attract talent from their job descriptions and remote onboarding to team best practices and employee benefits,
00:04:23 as well as just continual engagement amongst their remote employees, companies that do this right will succeed and companies that don't will struggle during this continual great resignation period. We'll also see companies that kept their office start to give their existing employees or their new remote hires, a stipend or benefit like that. Fast to book workspaces near their home to meet with their teammates or their clients,
00:04:49 rather than having to go into the company office. This is what employees want, flexibility, autonomy, and having options close to their home. In regards to the behavioral trends of hybrid teams. Since we work with hundreds of hybrid companies around the world, there will be an increase in the use of collaborative team spaces. So workspaces that have amped up their meeting rooms to be more movable and collaborative will benefit from increased bookings by hybrid companies.
00:05:18 Also, we continue to see an increase in meeting room bookings by hybrid teams and the money spent on those bookings continues to increase. As companies are recognizing the value of bringing their remote employees together on a continual basis. And last in regards to real estate, we'll see more landlords dip their toes in Coworking as the demand for workspaces rises. And with that comes more management agreements as this is the desired model for co-working space operators to maintain an asset light model loss,
00:05:51 still expanding their operations. As always, we wish all of our industry Peers the best and we are honored to be partnered with you. Thank you. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion. If you're working on opening a co-working space, I want to invite you to join me for my free masterclass three behind the scenes secrets to opening a coworking space.
00:06:17 If you're working on opening a coworking space, I want to share the three decisions that I've seen successful operators make when they're creating their Coworking business. The masterclass is totally free. It's about an hour and includes some Q and a. If you'd like to join me, you can register at Everything Coworking dot com forward slash masterclass. If you already have a coworking space,
00:06:41 I want to make sure you know, about Community Manager, University, Community Manager, University is a training and development platform for community managers, and it can be for owner operators. It has content training resources templates from day one to general manager. The platform includes mini courses that cover the major buckets of the Community Manager role from community management, operations, sales,
00:07:07 and marketing, finance, and leadership. The content is laid out in a graduated learning path. So the Community Manager can identify what content is most relevant to them, depending on their experience and kind of jump in from there. We provide a live brand new training every single month for the Community Manager group. We also host a live Q and a call every single month so that the community managers can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities get ideas from other community managers build their own peer network.
00:07:41 We also have a private slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more, you can go to Everything. Coworking dot com forward slash Community Manager. Hi, my name is Laurent Dhollande. I'm the CEO of Pacific Workplaces with 18 flexible office locations, mostly in Northern California. I'm also the CEO of CloudVO, which I can define as a value added reseller of workplace services delivered locally by partners,
00:08:18 but also a network promoter of 950 carefully vetted Coworking locations around the world that are our partners. So I see my road in the industry to help other coworking operators maximize their revenue and prepare themselves optimally to host enterprise customers. I have a background in corporate real estate as a corporate restaurant executives in fortune 50 companies. And I've been in the flexible office industry for 18 years.
00:08:55 So I'm trying to, to bring this background to, to bear, not just to have Planview partners, but anybody that wants to chat in the industry, I'm just always happy to, to exchange points of view. So what can we expect in 2022? Unfortunately, it's a lot of uncertainty, not unlike in the past year, mostly because of COVID.
00:09:24 But what I know for certain, however, is that when we have collectively the tools to deal with COVID and we getting there as a society and people are fully comfortable going back to the office and not just people, but they're sponsoring companies. If they work for a large enterprise, because these companies are not there yet not comfortable sending their people to the office yet.
00:09:52 So I don't know when this would happen, but I just know it will happen when that happened. Our industry is going to experience a boom, the lack of which we have never seen before. And that's the exciting news. Hopefully coming in 2022 enterprise users will becoming massively to our space because of the work near home and the flexibility solution that we offer to them,
00:10:25 but to do so, we all need to understand what enterprise users and their sponsoring companies need and be prepared for this amazing opportunity. Cheers. Hello, my name is Kayley DiCicco. I am the enterprise accounts director at expansive expansive as a third party of flexible workspace operator. We have 44 locations in counting across the U S that we own and operate. One of my predictions that we can expect to see happen in the flexible office industry in 2022 is that we are seeing big tech conglomerates already chomp off large chunks of the office space and build up campuses as innovation centers.
00:11:15 These companies, which are a small percentage in our new normal will maintain their HQ's and campuses. However, they will supplement with coworking space for meetings off-sites and corporate events near their HQ in the city center and their distributed employees will use coworking spaces as folks outside of the city center to bridge the alternative from home when they are not at their core headquarters prediction.
00:11:43 Number two, my prediction is that SMBs and even most enterprises will rely upon a Coworking as their knowledge and creative centers. Coworking provides the accessibility to various on-demand resources, curated common areas and community tailored events that allow various companies and industries to idea share, offering employees more opportunities to utilize flex space on an individual or small team basis has also helped many organizations get employees back into productive workspace while alleviating the liability of doing so in massive corporate offices.
00:12:23 Last but not least. My final prediction is that flexible office space can be booked like any other e-commerce transaction. You can book a day, pass a meeting room, a private office space for 50 people on demand, whatever workspace need exists. The beauty of flex space is that it can be molded to address it efficiently and effectively. It's often available immediately and off the shelf.
00:12:52 Those are my predictions for the Coworking industry in 2022. Thank you. I'm Hector Kolonas co-founder at Syncaroo and curator at this weekend. Coworking. My three major predictions for 2022 are Coworking becoming a bigger part of local infrastructure. Far-reaching tech improvements and a whole bunch of flex sector M and a firstly, I believe we'll continue to see a deeper focus on supporting hyper local communities through Coworking.
00:13:24 Examples are more support for working parents to improving our impact on the environment. So enabling local retailers and to championing diversity, inclusivity, accessibility, and equity in and around our spaces. We'll also see tech improvements across the operational staff expect upgrades in utility usability, and integratability as a lot of work is being done behind the scenes with some major releases and new features slated for 2022.
00:13:54 So definitely keep an eye out for that. But lastly, we're about to see an immense uptake in M and a activity across the sector expect to see more consolidation and expansions and mergers as operators adapt and carve out niches and modes and the new world of work. Thanks for having me and I look forward to helping the world go flex with all of you next year.
00:14:21 Hey there, thanks for sticking with us through the end of the episode, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. And if you were enjoying the podcast, please go leave us a review. It helps other folks find the podcast who are thinking about starting a coworking space or already operating a coworking space and are looking to stay up to speed on tips and trends.
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