If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to find a better work/life balance, a co-working space may help you achieve you achieve that.
Working from home may make life easier with no traffic congested commute, but sometimes you just need to get out of the house. Sometimes you need a quiet place away from the kids, the pets, and the household chores. A place where you have an office and a conference room to meet with a client away from the kitchen table. That is what co-working spaces offer.
What is a Co-Working Space?
A co-working space provides an address for small businesses and freelancers that work out of their house or a space closer to home but not as far as the office to take a Zoom meeting. But many co-working spaces have become more than that. They provide opportunities for networking, give business advice, and offer tips for finding a work/life balance.
There are two of these spaces in Wilson County, Success Lab in Mt. Juliet and Public Square Business Center in Lebanon. Success Lab offers clean lines with modern farmhouse furnishings, while Public Square is located in a vintage building with rough brick walls and contemporary industrial furnishings. Both provide all anyone needs to run an office — including Wi-Fi, printers and copy machines.
Office Vibe is Important
How an office looks and feels has been proven to affect productivity. Old office design norms are no longer accepted as conducive to efficient work. Low morale, stress and problems concentrating are all reported as the outcomes of poor workspace design.
According to zenbooth.com, “The open office was an early design fad which gained popularity back in the 1950s. The idea was noble enough – it was assumed that this would increase collaboration and result in an improved sense of community. However, the exact opposite has happened. Research has shown that the increasingly crowded workplaces the open-plan offices tend to enable, along with the lack of privacy, result in defensive behaviors and strained relationships…And a now-famous study has shown that open office employees today spend an astounding 73% less time engaging in face-to-face interaction…Open offices are associated with more stress and fatigue and increased absenteeism.”
What is more productive is what is known as “Activity Based Working”(ABW). This style of workplace has multiple settings with each designed to support specific tasks with the necessary technology and supplies. Co-working spaces are designed based on this concept, making them an optimum flexible space.
“In one study,” it says on zenbooth.com, “employees reported that an ABW workspace resulted in much higher-than-average productivity (67%) and pride in their work (86%), as well as increased creativity and the ability to perform in complex work profiles.”
So, rather than a home office or going into an inflexible corporate office environment, a co-working space provides inspiring offices for entrepreneurs and other professionals. There are open spaces and small offices where the door can be shut to have no distractions to focus on the work, as well as meeting rooms and collaborative areas.
More Than Office and Meeting Space
Co-working spaces these days often offer more than just office and meeting space. Success Lab gives tips on how to create a work-from-home proposal now that more businesses are requiring staff to go back to the office. The tips include developing a formal proposal with an outline of parts of the job that can be done at home, and those that are better completed at the office. The proposal also needs to address productivity, IT security issues, and how working from home will impact your job and those who work with you.
Other tips are for small business owners, because for them business and their lives are more likely to fall off balance. Setting life goals and prioritizing them keeps small business owners from burning out. He or she also needs to start small, create a vision for their business that looks at all facets, and to keep improving steadily.
To avoid burnout, those who work from home need to remember to have a change of scenery periodically, like working in a coffee shop or co-working space. Also, it is important to schedule fun and find time for a long weekend and/or a vacation.
Co-Working Space Meets Multiple Office Needs
In the end, a co-working space provides both a lack of distraction in which to focus on work, a place to network with like-minded people, meeting space and a place to thrive.
