300. Coworking New Member Onboarding Hierarchy of Needs

00:00:02,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how-tos in Coworking. I owned and operated Coworking spaces for eight years and then served as the executive director of the Global Workspace Association for five years. And today I work with hundreds of operators and community managers every month, allowing me to bring you thought provoking operator,"

00:00:29,"case studies and inspirational interviews with industry thought leaders to help you confidently stay on top of what's important and what you can apply to your own role in the Coworking industry. Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. Thank you for joining me. I hope you are enjoying some good spring weather. I feel like we just flipped our switched here in Northern California."

00:00:58,"I am sitting next to my berry. It's sunny, nice and warm, like 60 something degrees. Oh, it's 57 now. Well it was 61 earlier. Took the dogs for a walk for a little break after like five hours of zoom. And I just feel like living the dream. We went to the beach yesterday on Easter. It was a little windy,"

00:01:20,"but still glad to have some spring weather. We're gonna talk about member onboarding today. So this is top of mind. I recently joined a co-working space and it's making me, you know, I'm observing a lot of things and having lots of ideas about topics to cover. Member onboarding is so important and I think it's one of those things that sometimes we think we've really nailed but maybe isn't."

00:01:50,"We aren't executing as well as we wanted to or things have changed and we just haven't revisited our processes in a while. I know when we went back through, so we have lots of topics on member onboarding, we have onboarding sequences, we have, you name it, we've got it. And I just went through and totally updated our resources and did some crowdsourcing."

00:02:11,"So we did a live training for our community managers last week and we got some great ideas from our members. So we've been trying to shift our format a little bit. Sometimes I get a topic that I just have got a lot to cover and so we don't have as much time for interaction. But lately we have some really fantastic experienced community managers in our group."

00:02:37,"And even our new folks, everybody does things a little bit differently. So giving everyone lots of time to contribute. Although sometimes our lots of our community managers are calling in from the front desk cause we do a lot over chat. Chat contributions are good too. So we had a great conversation about member onboarding that kind of went along with our updated training and I just wanted to to share a few insights."

00:03:01,"I think for me the biggest insight was it is awesome and super important to have great documentation around all of the sort of necessary aspects of onboarding. We cannot get a member in the space until they've signed their contract and set up their payment and our billing software. They need door access. So I bucketed our new onboarding checklist into contracts and payment access. So door access,"

00:03:28,"wifi access, community norms. So this is getting, so I talked in the training about this concept of, well, not a new concept, but I used the analogy of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? There's like your basics like food, clothing, shelter. And then the top of the pyramid is really around like self-actualization. So the bottom of the pyramid of onboarding a member is contracts payment access."

00:03:57,"So somebody's gotta be able to pay you, have an active membership, sign the agreement, get into the space with however you know, whatever door access you use, digital or analog. And then they need to be able to get on the wifi and I suppose they need to know where they're sitting if that's in an office, a dedicated desk or whatever."

00:04:14,"Those are kind of the basics. And then as we move up the pyramid, we get into community norms, which are things like, you know, what is the phone use rule in the common area? Are there limits on the phone rooms? You know, where do I park? Some of those things aren't like total norms, but what do I do with my D dirty dishes?"

00:04:34,"What are the rules for the, you know, refrigerator? And then as we move higher up into the pyramid is like community introduction. That's like the self-actualization of the onboarding hierarchy, which is you can function in a space without getting to know anyone else. Without getting to know the community managers, without getting to know any other members, you'll be fine."

00:04:58,"You will survive, you'll have a reasonably happy life. But probably most members want some introduction into the community. I was talking to Jim Hyde who is the founder of Craftwork in Hillsburg and he was like, joining a Coworking space is like being the new kid at a high school. It's kind of awkward. I was like, it's totally awkward. That's exactly what it is."

00:05:21,"Even for people who are really confident business professionals, it's just a strange environment. You don't know, you know, sort of the rules of the game. You sense that other people know each other and are comfortable in the space and comfortable with each other, but you are not there yet. And I think it's so important to put ourselves back into that head space of that new member who doesn't know us isn't,"

00:05:46,"has never maybe used Coworking before. And I think especially as we talk about, you know, we did the, I did a couple of episodes about how the total addressable market of Coworking should be giant or you know, becoming even larger. Those folks have never used Coworking before. You know, if they're used to going any remote employees used to going to a corporate campus,"

00:06:08,"they definitely aren't comfortable with Coworking, don't know it, don't understand it. So you wanna really put your head in their space of being totally new and not knowing like how this works. And I would say sometimes maybe for like successful professionals or you know, people who can afford Coworking spaces, it's not normal to feel uncomfortable. So maybe it feels even more uncomfortable to feel uncomfortable."

00:06:35,"I want to interrupt you for a minute with a special offer. If you are an operator that is getting ready to launch or your space is less than a year old and less than 200 members, office r and d is piloting a program called Flex Startup program, which allows you to save 50% on your first year with office r and d Flex to help you grow your co-working space."

00:07:01,"As many of you know, I run programs that help operators launch. I run mastermind programs for operators that are in business and a Community Manager program. And we have lots of members that love using r and d office r and d. It's kind of an all-in-one platform that has fantastic analytics, meeting room management, lots of integrations, all the things as I like to say."

00:07:27,"So it's a fan favorite of the Everything Coworking program members. So I'm excited that you get a chance to kind of get started with it at a discounted rate. So 50% off of your first year you can learn more about the offer and sign up for a demo by going to Everything Coworking dot com slash nd. That's Everything Coworking dot com slash O R N d."

00:07:55,"We'll also throw that link in the show notes. So if you open your podcast app, you can grab the link right there. I, at my stage in life don't really mind feeling a little bit awkward. My daughter who is 11, does not like to feel awkward. Her new term is cringey mom. That's cringey. That's amazing. That's my favorite thing to hear."

00:08:13,"I think I'm cringey a lot because I don't mind being a little bit awkward or uncomfortable, but not everybody is as comfortable with being uncomfortable and even for me, I totally feel like the new kid in high school. So it doesn't take long to make your members feel kind of a part of the vibe and what's happening and sort of, you know, get comfortable."

00:08:34,"But it does take some facilitation. So my experience is that the, you may have a membership that introduces themselves, maybe that's your culture. I would guess those are a little bit few and far between. Most memberships are not quite as over the top hospitable without the formal facilitation of a Community Manager. So community managers, you know, and owner operators or owners that have community managers,"

00:09:02,"you really wanna make sure you're taking on this role. Don't assume your members are handling this and getting new members into the fold. So I guess that's just really my primary tip cause I'm not gonna give away all of our good secrets. We have this awesome updated checklist document. If you're curious about what happens in Community, Manager, University, we do best practice calls once a month."

00:09:25,"We do training calls and we post trainings, we post templates, we post resources. So we updated this onboarding checklist, which is awesome for anybody who's just starting out. It's a one of those like no need to reinvent the wheels, grab it for yourself. Or even if you've been open for a while, I will tell you we had several people on our training call who said,"

00:09:48,"you know what, I've been a little bit like Leslie Fair about our onboarding. I sort of assume like just let people do their thing and they'll get comfortable in their own way. But the conversation we had about onboarding was really inspiring them to formalize their onboarding. And formalize doesn't mean make it feel formal necessarily, but making sure you're really covering your bases."

00:10:11,"So I am gonna share a couple of great suggestions that we crowdsourced from the group. So I pulled open my notes and the group chat from after our training session and I added them to our document. I'm not gonna share all of them, but just a couple of them because just to give it a little bit of context, we had a great conversation."

00:10:29,"One of the things that's challenging about being a Community Manager or if you're an owner operator, you totally know this, there are different segments of folks who come into your space. There are the folks that are super into getting to know other people. There are people who are like, yeah, I mean I'm really here to get stuff done. It's really distracting at home,"

00:10:51,"but I don't mind, you know, getting to know a new community that seems like a bonus. And then there are people who come in are like, yeah, I have a meeting to get to so please don't make me sit through your 15 minute onboarding. So we had a lot of really good discussions about how long is onboarding, how do you handle the different segments of folks that come in and you get to hear how other folks handle."

00:11:13,"We have one giant space, I always forget, I think they're in Maine Hula and they have an hour and a half onboarding. They do it maybe every two weeks. I think they said they have multiple staff members participate. And it's awesome because they onboard so many new members that they need to do it in a group. And there's so many things that new members need to understand that they have to make it an hour and a half and there are slides,"

00:11:39,"et cetera. So if you think you can't make a member sit through 15 minutes, they're doing an hour and a half. So there's just a lot of different ways to do it, but we know there are segments of people who, some of them just don't wanna play along and that is okay. So you just kind of need to know your audience a little bit,"

00:11:56,"but maybe start for a place of assuming that people want to get engaged a little bit. So here are some of the couple of of the tips that we had. So Eric from Work Lodge said he makes a phone call to new members before they come in to make sure they have their calendar cleared for the time it will take to complete their onboarding. So we talked about how some people come in and like literally have a meeting scheduled 10 minutes after they show up and like just have no concept around why there needs to be this onboarding meeting."

00:12:28,"Even if you've put it on their calendar, they just think it's some sort of placeholder that's not actually going to take up their time. So he calls them and says like, look, this is real time. We need, you know, you, we need you to clear your calendar for 15 minutes at thir, you know, 30 minutes, however long your onboarding process is and here's what you can expect that we're gonna get done so that the new members really understand."

00:12:52,"All that goes into joining a Coworking space. It's pretty plug and play, but it's not, you know, roll in and not have to interact with anybody. Right? We also had the post said, you know, don't hesitate to ask some personal questions about of the member, which helps you make a connection. And she has a hospitality background and so she's all about anticipating member needs and anticipating,"

00:13:16,"you know, interactions that will be positive for members. So she likes to ask personal questions, not overly personal, but about pets, you know, where they live, what they like to do for fun. You don't have to get nosy about, you know, family structure and things like that. Let that come out over time. But she has some great suggestions to share."

00:13:35,"And we had some other ones too. But the general takeaways were be intentional and make sure that you're not just covering the basics of get people in, get them started on their work because you're really setting a tone and setting the culture. So if you're struggling with P getting people to interact or setting up that community culture, it might be because you're setting the tone that what happens here is you show up and you get to work and we're not really addressing that community aspect."

00:14:04,"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 wanna invite you to join me for my free masterclass. Three behind the Scene Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space. If you're working on opening a Coworking space, I wanna share the three decisions that I've seen successful operators make when they're creating their Coworking business."

00:14:28,"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 slash masterclass. If you already have a Coworking space, I wanna 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."

00:14:53,"It has content training, resources, templates from day one to general manager. The platform includes many courses that cover the major buckets of the Community Manager role from community management operations, sales 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."

00:15:22,"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 Manager can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities, get ideas from other community managers, build their own peer network. We also have a private Slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more,"

00:15:47,"you can go to Everything Coworking dot com slash Community Manager. If you have member events coming up, make sure you explain to them how member events work and what they can expect. Definitely don't assume that they understand how it all works. They probably don't. So we know how it works cuz we're in the business, right? This is what we do all the time and our current members know how it works cuz they've experienced it."

00:16:10,"But really put yourself in that hat of new, new members and you know, don't be afraid to be really kind of handhold them through what to expect and how to get set up for success. And again, read the room. If you've got, you know, the guy who's like, talk to the hand, I'm not interested, that's fine. You're gonna have those folks."

00:16:31,"But also realize those folks can be some of your best members. Maybe they require an office and so you know, they're gonna have a long tenure with you no matter what. As long as they're kind of happy with the environment and the aesthetics and the team. But the folks who are coming in for open space memberships, they may have distractions at home and may have a little bit of a need,"

00:16:55,"but we've talked a lot about how those are more discretionary members, right? They're coming because they want something more than they're getting at home. And so if you onboard them and only show them sort of the commodity aspects of being a member here, which is wifi access and you know, easy month to month billing, then you may not be showing them what they came to see."

00:17:19,"That's an anyway. Then I don't wanna give too much more away about the details of the training, but definitely think about who your audience is and think about why they're there. And you know, maybe go deeper on the community piece for the folks who are coming in for the Coworking because they're, they're probably more likely to be interested in that aspect of the space."

00:17:39,"So takeaway is give some thought to your onboarding process. Make sure it's documented. We know we have teams turnover, different people doing onboarding. It's always a good idea to revisit what that looks like. Make sure your process looks how you want it to look today. You know, after you've, maybe you've been in business for a while and make sure that your team is aligned with that."

00:18:03,"Maybe do a refresher with your team. And we make all of our downloadables very customizable. We hand out word version so that you can take our template and make it your own because nobody does onboarding the exact same way that another space does. So that's my food for thought for today is think about how important setting the tone is and making first impressions can be for your new members and try to sort of hit their onboarding experience a little higher on the hierarchy of needs."

00:18:33,"If you have any thoughts or you have anything to share about your member ex onboarding experience, we would love to hear from you. I'm speaking at GCUC. Next, well the yes, next Tuesday. So when this goes live, wait next Wednesday when this goes live. We'll be on our way. If you're gonna be there, please make sure to say hello."

00:18:52,"I am moderating the first panel Wednesday morning on KPIs, key Performance Indicators. We did our prep call this week. So Alaia Alaia is the director of Operations for Common Desk, which is a WeWork company, and I'm totally blanking on our last name right now. She is amazing. You are gonna love her. She's been on the podcast and flip. Howard is the CEO of Lucid Private Workspaces,"

00:19:21,"which used to be, he's changed his name a couple times now. I think it was originally Meridian and then Work Suites. But they have 20 plus locations and they're gonna, he's gonna share some really great insights and numbers. We're getting into the details. We decided like we're going all in for being transparent and letting people know what the panel is, tracking what their targets are,"

00:19:43,"and Kane Wil Kane Wilmont, he's the CEO of IQ offices in Canada. So it's gonna be a great discussion. So if you're there, get up nice and early. I think we're like 9:15 or 9:45. We're pretty early on Wednesday. We'd love to see you there. And if you're at GCUC, please, please make sure you come and say hello and we will see you next time."

00:20:08,"Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, hit that subscribe button and leave us a rating and review. It makes a huge difference in helping others like you find us. If you'd like to learn more about our education and coaching programs, head over to Everything Coworking dot com. We'll see you next week."

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Jamie RussoApril 19, 2023Comment

300. Coworking New Member Onboarding Hierarchy of Needs

300. Coworking New Member Onboarding Hierarchy of Needs

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