Until a couple of years ago, coworking spaces were almost solely dominated by entrepreneurs and small startup teams who needed a consistent place to meet that was not their studio apartments. Now, though, big corporations are buying out entire sections of coworking spaces (we are talking entire floors) for their employees and teams.
For employees who have created a remote contract or for companies hoping to establish themselves in a new city, the corporation does not need to shell out a lot of money and waste a lot of time in order to buy and construct a totally new office in that city.
The setup is easy, there is less paperwork, and no delay in the employees' ability to serve the company's bottom line from a new location.
The accounting department in a corporation benefits from the flexibility of memberships and desk spaces as well as the "pay-as-you-grow" plans that only cost them what they need at any given time and allows them to track expenses based on their specific employees' work setting or role, as reported in a recent The New Web article.
Corporations are also attracted to coworking spaces for several reasons related to overall corporate strategy. The article explains that companies either partner with or buy space in coworking studios in order to methodically explore:
- how to best enter new markets based on what other members are working on
- partnering with either the coworking space itself or startups within the office for new innovation
- different startups entering the market themselves for the sake of potential future acquisitions
Long standing corporate institutions remain stalwart in their old office design, but the trend of corporations using and infusing themselves into coworking spaces seems to be just beginning.