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 is clear that the coworking industry has hit an inflection point and is heading to a new level of maturity.
What are the specific elements, from a corporate perspective, that are driving those rising rates of adoption? There are many, here are two:
1. The real estate angle is an obvious one. As firms scale up and down, and as company employees seek greater choice and flexibility in how they work, fluid workspace solutions help firms avoid costly long leases for offices that go underutilized. Traditional office utilization rates rarely get above 60%, which has been a structural problem in corporate real estate for years. Of course, this is great for asset owners and brokers, who happily lease tenant companies more space than they need, but for companies and employees it seems that that changing..
2. Another driver is the issue of productivity and employee output among workers who work in coworking spaces.
