Discover how the Coworking Office Typology can benefit your company’s extended community of users, including employees, partners, vendors, and collaborators. Learn about the flexible workspace and how it optimizes real estate usage and enhances employee experience.
Explore the potential benefits of coworking on campus as a strategy for companies to maximize real estate footprint efficiency and optimize employee experience. Learn from our research at OpenWork on how to navigate the challenges of returning to the office in 2023.
Discover the top 7 reasons why hybrid working is the future of work. From employee well-being and sustainability to customer service and cost savings, hybrid working is the new standard in the modern workplace. Learn more in our blog post.
Discover how the metaverse is transforming workplace strategy and enhancing collaboration, communication, and productivity in the office. Explore the potential of the metaverse and its role in a hybrid workplace strategy.
Unlock the full potential of AI in the workplace. Our article explores the philosophy of experimentation and how it drives business innovation. Learn how OpenWork Agency can help you leverage AI to transform your business models and work cultures in 2023.
While hybrid working offers many benefits, it also presents challenges for companies and employees alike. To truly understand how hybrid working is impacting employees and the organization as a whole, it is necessary to use qualitative (ethnographic) inquiry to gather information about the employee experience.
Activity-based working, also known as ABW, is a modern approach to organizing office space and workflows. It is a departure from the traditional model of assigned desks and fixed workstations, and instead prioritizes flexibility and collaboration.
Today’s workers are more mobile and more independent than ever before, and they are looking for flexible workspaces that can keep up with their lifestyle. Coworking spaces have responded by offering memberships that allow access to multiple locations, extended hours, and on-demand workspace. In addition, many coworking spaces now offer additional services such as childcare, wellness programs, and social events. As the workforce continues to evolve, the coworking industry will need to continue to adapt to meet the changing needs of workers.
As the world of work continues to evolve, so too must the workplace itself.
In order to create a smart workplace, you need the right technology in place. This technology includes connected building software, which allows for all of the different systems in your office to communicate with each other and for users to have the ability to have a sense of autonomy around their workplace.
There are numerous Metaverse platforms that exist today, each with their own unique value propositions and appeals to different types of uses and users.
To the extent that both empathy and innovative corporate strategies are derived from broad cultural intelligence and curiosity about others and their worldviews, I would suggest that anthropology is uniquely situated to become a go-to social science in the development of corporate leaders.
To grow our own knowledge base, and to share that with others, we created OpenWork Conversations. OpenWork Conversations is an interview series with thought leaders we admire, where we invite them to share their insights around a variety of hybrid-related topics.
Organizations are like snowflakes. Each is unique in its own way. When it comes to committing to a hybrid working strategy, there isn’t an off-the-shelf list of options from which to choose.
Since the pandemic, it is been postulated how to maintain connection with coworking space members and company employees while working from home. How do we maintain cohesive workplace branding and experience no matter where we are?
Explore our coworking solutions.
Adapt your culture to the requirements of remote work. Connecting and aligning a distributed workforce, whether employees are at home or at a coworking space or coffee shop, requires an open-source approach that draws from many existing technologies and tools. That requires not only a mindset shift, but a culture shift.
What is today’s hybrid workplace? View our diagram.
A collection of work ambiance videos to help you find your optimal flow, wherever you are.
Multifamily residential communities, especially those located within thoughtfully designed mixed-use projects, are becoming important locations and potential revenue sources in what is a new phase of urban planning and development.
Are we trying to protect the old ways? Or is it time for a new perspective?
Given the current circumstances that we are all in, we are beginning to look at alternative ways of working.
Where/how will your employees likely be working in the next year or two? What is the real estate impact to your bottom line? Using scenario modeling we can anticipate possible futures and be better prepared for success.
Over the past seven years we have conducted coworking feasibility assessments for numerous real estate projects around the world. Most of the projects have been with building owners and developers interested in diversifying their portfolios by ‘getting into coworking.’ Now we are offering a Corporate Coworking Feasibility for companies who are assessing their hybrid workplace strategy.
Equipped with your company’s unique data, we prepare a thorough report that analyzes the data and provides our recommendations for an effective COVID-19 workplace strategy. A comprehensive report is delivered as a media-rich PDF.
This video gives a typical work day experience for a work from home professional. From waking up in the morning, through lunch, until calling it a day. Working from home is part of the new hybrid workplace. When we can empower the workforce to work where, when, and how they choose- then we have Read More
Explore our categized list of remote working tools and resources.
Contradictions: Inclusive Design for All Generations Wednesday, June 17 10:00am–11:00am CDT [NC017 CEU] In light of the current health crisis we will examine the inherent challenges designers face when dealing with five generations in the workforce to provide choices of where, how, when and with whom they work to enhance user experience and performance. In this Read More
In this white paper we look at the challenges that the coworking industry faces in light of the current crisis, and provide three scenarios that explore what might unfold in the coming years. Each of the three scenarios will require adaptation and innovation among coworking operators, some more than others.
Hello, Welcome to the first issue of our newsletter- Humans @Work. In this series we will share some of our own thoughts as well as those of other companies and individuals who inspire us. We hope you find it useful, and we would love to hear from you.Thanks, Well before the Read More
Since the pandemic began millions of Americans have been forced to use technologies in ways that they never knew they could. Zoom (and ‘zoom calls’) has become a household name in short order. Slack, the simple messaging platform, has also quickly leaped the chasm of adoption. From ordering groceries online to conducting all of one’s work online, we have collectively been through a shift of rapid adoption that is historic.
In a previous book- The Fifth Age of Work– I began with a simple but perhaps odd question: What would HR in a company look like if a designer were put in charge? I tried to answer that question as best as I could, but I think that discussion was probably about 15 minutes early. Binary Impasse Read More
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Anyone can start a coworking space. If planned effectively, it’s possible to secure financial backing from lending institutions or local angel investors. As the world’s first coworking consultancy (serving coworking startups since 2014 and players in the industry since 2008), we’ve received inquiries from a wide spectrum of types who have entertained the notion of Read More
In a much overlooked 2007 article, “Dignity at Work” (in the journal Organization), sociologist Andrew Sayer outlines the connections between employee autonomy, trust in employees, respect for their work, and being taken seriously as the foundations for what he calls ‘dignity at work.’ Sayer was approaching the subject from perhaps a more critical perspective than most corporate decision Read More
What’s in a word? Or a phrase? Over the past thirty years companies of all stripes and sizes have embraced the concept of activity based working (ABW). ABW is a workplace strategy where employees do not have a fixed office or workstation, but rather work in different areas of an office depending on the type Read More
Too often, office design ignores this and proceeds to lavish wasteful workspaces on the company’s senior executives while relegating rank and file employees to supposedly “collaborative” open plan offices. Any truly open and innovative company culture starts with workspaces that reflect the signature values of the company. What are those values, and how are they Read More
OpenWork Founding Partner, Andrew Jones, recently published a guest article in Today’s Hotelier. The article, discussing the growing trend of Hotel Coworking, opens the door to the opportunity of embracing the coworking model within the existing hospitality industry ecosystem. Read the article, Your (Meeting) Room is Now Ready.
Over the past five years we at the OpenWork Agency have helped real estate developers and entrepreneurs around the world with their various “coworking” projects. I use quotes here because for anyone familiar with the original coworking 1.0 movement, these projects are typically much less ‘coworking’ and much more ‘office.’ That is, the very notion of coworking Read More
Coworking Grows Up In a little over a decade coworking has grown from being a scrappy officing solution for freelancers and startups into a multibillion dollar industry with thousands of operators around the world.[1] Defined as ‘a multi-company campus for companies of all sizes,’ coworking has established itself as a viable workplace arrangement for the sharing economy. Industry unicorn, Read More
A turnkey consulting solution managed online- from concept to launch. AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — OpenWork Agency, a global coworking consultancy, has announced the launch of a Consulting as a Service (CaaS) offering for asset owners, real estate investors and developers. Managed online, the platform guides clients through eight phases of the coworking business development process. Read More
Coworking is not that big a deal In some ways many of us make too big a deal about coworking. One could argue, as some do, that it is just a (different) place to work. Like just desks and chairs, punctuated by locally roasted coffee and craft beer. And, frankly, there is something to this Read More
Puzzles & Roadmaps “Since when did employee engagement in our tenant companies become our business?” The Chief Strategy Officer of one of Singapore’s largest REITs posed the question in the middle of a tense session about how they were looking to reposition their office portfolio. They wanted to ‘activate’ some of their offices buildings in such a way to Read More
Over the past decade more and more companies- small, medium, and large- have embraced coworking as part of their workplace strategy. It is now widely accepted that coworking is no longer just for freelancers, startups, and solopreneurs. When firms such as IBM, Amazon, and UBS take up whole buildings under WeWork’s coworking management system, it Read More
As I have suggested recently, the key drivers behind the growth of corporate coworking have been for the most part real estate drivers. The economics of this simply make sense, despite the skeptics. If one looks only narrowly at the price per square foot for a workstation in a private office in a coworking space (such Read More
Twenty five percent of WeWork’s members are ‘corporate coworkers,’ and the company now boasts that 22% of the Fortune 500 companies have employees who work in their spaces. At the current rate of growth, some 40-50% of coworking members will be corporate users within five to seven years. With firms such as GE, Samsung, Microsoft, Dell, HSBC, Accenture, Read More
In the spirit of today being Independence Day (in the USA), it felt especially fitting to honor the global discussion around company policies that encourage independence within the evolving employee workforce. At OpenWork Agency we believe that employees who are honored with choice, flexibility, autonomy, and decision-making rights are more productive, healthier, and ultimately contribute to a Read More
Introduction As software, AI, IoT, and robotics swallow more and more of the world (as Marc Andreessen suggested they would), it is natural to wonder what the role will be for people? For years we’ve heard corporate leaders, as well as their HR lieutenants, tell us that their people are ‘their most important assets,’ but Read More
Introduction Research on CEO priorities consistently shows that innovation remains a top priority for most corporate leaders. This has been the case for well over a decade. Which company, or company leader, would not want their companies to grow through innovation? The challenge, when push comes to shove, is how to get to innovation? At Read More
Over the past eight years coworking has gone from being a social movement to being a bona fide industry. As asset owners and real estate professionals learn more about the significant rent arbitrage potential, and as investors and lenders become more comfortable with the risk profile of coworking businesses, the floodgates have opened up. VC Read More
Introduction According to the historian of science Thomas Kuhn, scientific paradigms change only at glacial speed. Even as evidence in a particular scientific field mounts to challenge existing theory, a field’s professionals, institutions, associations, and journals often acknowledge and embrace the new paradigm over the course of a generation. This is clearly happening in the Read More
Please join PDR for 18HX— Eighteen Hacks Enjoy craft drinks, small bites and inspiring conversation among friends. 18HX brings together a panel of six expert “hackers” who traffic in Cultural Capital. Each of our guests will reveal how they are actively reprogramming the realms of Hospitality, Social Impact, Brand Identity, Data Science, Real Estate and Workplace Engineering. Come learn eighteen Read More
As part of being in the coworking industry since its inception, operating coworking spaces, consulting with coworking operators and real estate developers, participating in (and running) global coworking and workspace conferences, it’s our job at OpenWork to stay-in-the-know regarding innovations (and disruptions) in our industry. We share a lot on social media about coworking, the Read More
In my current book project (tentatively called “After Corporate Culture”), I am trying to understand the long-term impact that fluid and mobile working is having on company culture. For quite some time, of course, many firms have allowed, either officially or unofficially, employees to work from home or off-site at least some of the time. However, as Read More
Are You Ready? For the past four years we have been closely watching as more and more mainstream users have embraced coworking as a new way of working. What at first seemed like a fringe phenomenon that was suited primarily for freelancers and startups has grown to be much more than this. Recently, while walking through a Read More
Culture Past and Future In his 2015 Wall Street Journal article, “Data is our New Middle Manager,” Christopher Mims chronicles the emerging management practices of lean startups. The article suggests that, in an era of radical transparency where ALL employees have access to ALL the relevant data that impacts a company (small or large), there is less Read More
As long-standing participants in the coworking industry, the partners at OpenWork Agency have seen the industry evolve since the beginning. What was once a social movement is now a sure enough industry. Depending on what your vantage point is, though, coworking is different things to different people. In this article I reflect on some of Read More
Marc Andreessen once famously said that ‘software is eating the world,’ and that if your business can’t be boiled down to a simple (software) solution it probably doesn’t have much of a chance. Or at least, in his world of venture investing, if your startup isn’t predicated on an elegant piece of software, then your Read More