Why in 2020 Coworking is the future and how it can be the perfect complement for your company?
Index
How Shopping Centres are looking at Coworking as an opportunity
According to a recent BPrime study, shopping centers in Portugal are expected to invest soon in the creation of specific cowork areas, with the aim of reducing the impact of the breaks resulting from the pandemic.
The idea is to prolong the permanence of customers in shopping centers, taking advantage of the consolidation and increase of telework in Portugal.
Corp-Working: Another Trend That Should Grow In Portugal
This way of working has already been proved in other pandemic outbreaks, such as the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic between 2002 and 2004. At that time companies were forced to find safe spaces where to place some of their employees.
In todays era, the vast majority of companies face a similar problem, and the solution found has been the “mirror” rotation of teams. Now, what many companies are realizing worldwide is that instead of having half of their team working at home, they can have half of their team working in a Cowork space, thus respecting the rules of social distancing but not jeopardizing teamwork and productivity in the long term.
In fact this need is already creating a worldwide trend, known as Corporate Coworking (or corp-working, in its abbreviation), which results from an increasingly constant presence of corporate clients in coworking spaces, in some cases already representing 1/3 of the occupation. Large companies such as IBM, UBS and Facebook are some that have already begun to use corp-working as a way to comply with the security rules imposed by the pandemic.
The Cowork Should Also Grow In The Country's Interior
Not even the Portuguese government is unaware of the opportunity that the cowork model represents. After having announced in the summer to have a small bazooka of 20 million euros coming from European Union funds to invest in coworking space in the interior of the country, came now to present a proposal to decentralize public services to place them in… that’s right, coworking spaces.
The state budget proposal (OE) presented last October 12th intends to put 25% of the Central Administration working in the interior of the country, in a telework regime, until the end of the legislature.
As it is possible to read in the 2021 State Budget report, the transfer of public services to the interior of the country “will be based on a program of job portability, aiming at taking advantage of existing local structures, namely in municipalities and other state institutions, so that telework centers can be created in the interior of the country, namely through the provision of shared work spaces (cowork)”.
Some of the advantages of these spaces pointed out in the report are “a greater flexibility in the provision of work, in terms of time and conjugation with personal, family and professional life and, simultaneously, mitigate absenteeism.
One example of a thriving coworking space in Évora is Giraldo Works space, located near Praça do Giraldo.
The Fall of a Myth
All these indicators make it clear that the idea that coworking spaces are spaces exclusive to startups and freelancers is just a myth and that in fact, this alternative to the traditional office, serves the most varied sectors and workers.
Who says so is the director general of the consultancy BPrime: “due to the expansion of this business segment, we can conclude that it is consolidating in all markets,” highlighted the magazine Visão recently.
The study of BPrime directed to the cowork sector estimates that within two years there are about 5.1 million users of these spaces.
This way, to have a more fully understaning of all the advantages of working in a cowork space we recommend you read this article.
