The last seven months have seen a sea change in the way we work.
As COVID-19 forced many workers out of the office and into home offices or kitchen tables, the remote revolution got very real.
No longer was remote work something forward-leaning or distributed companies could do, it became the norm for many people and companies.
The work-from-home (WFH) trend, which has been growing slowly for decades, accelerated more quickly than anyone could have imagined. The COVID lockdown accelerated the remote work trend by years.
No surprise to those of us in coworking, WFH is not going away. The model has been adopted by companies across sectors by necessity and, in large part, because it works.
This is great news for coworking space operators and the people in coworking spaces.
The 2020 Global Coworking Growth Study reports that the number of coworking spaces worldwide is projected to reach almost 20,000 this year and cross over 40,000 by 2024.
Coworking Resources explains, “While the industry is set to grow at a slower pace in 2020, we expect growth to rebound and develop even more rapidly from 2021 onwards, with a yearly growth rate of 21.3%…We estimate that almost 5 million people will be working from coworking spaces by 2024, an increase of 158% compared to 2020.”
The future of coworking is bright because WFH doesn’t work for everyone.
Even those people it does work for need shared workspace for the occasional meeting, media rooms, collaboration and networking, and community.
When people need a break from using the kitchen table as their office, flexible office spaces play a key role in being able to provide Work-Near-Home solutions.
Pacific Workplaces takes coworking and the future of work seriously. Here are some of the services offered to support remote and WFH workers:
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- Zoom Rooms that provide a high-level video conferencing experience, without having to pay for a Zoom license.
- Digital mail services to manage all your business mail electronically without having to leave your home office.
- Virtual Office Plans which include access to clean, COVID-conscious meeting spaces and guest offices on-demand.
- Hourly guest office and meeting room rentals
- Furnished private office space
- Live phone answering
- Dedicated desks
- Administrative services such as printing, scanning and copying
- Touchdown coworking through our global network of nearly 1,000 COVID-conscious locations manged by our sister company, CloudVO.
Private offices and Virtual Office Plans for part-time officing within a shared workspace community when you need a break from WFH.
Dedicated desks and customizable coworking memberships.
One of the great lessons learned in these last several months is that we need human connection. Community coworking spaces fill that need.
At some point COVID-19 will be in the rearview mirror and people will be back to socializing, collaborating in-person, and connecting.
A wave of people will be working from home, but we are positively optimistic that the need for flexible office spaces with private offices, meeting rooms, dedicated desks, media rooms, and open coworking areas will still be there – so we’ll be here when you need us.