Considering a Coworking Space? Here’s why it’s the Future

With the first half of 2020 marred by the pandemic and the forced rise in remote working, it may be difficult to see how coworking spaces are our future. At least, it will be if you love working from home. If you found that this forced time at home has shown you exactly why working from home doesn’t work, this article is going to be right up your alley. Working from home isn’t the dream solution we all hoped – yes, you can roll out of bed and start working in your pajamas, but do you really want to? 

Working from Home isn't all it's cracked up to be

When work comes home, it becomes all-consuming. For people like us – ambitious, driven, and ready to do whatever it takes to succeed – this is the recipe for sixteen-hour workdays. We take too many trips to the refrigerator, we don’t have to be presentable to the outside world, and we stop being social. 

It may sound counter-intuitive, but when we work from home day-in, day-out, we lose all work-life balance. A 2019 study by Buffer on the state of remote work found that unplugging after work was the biggest struggle for 22% of those working remotely. That was closely followed by loneliness, at 19%, and difficulties in collaboration and communication, at 17%. 

But isn’t remote working going to be the future? After all, you can build a team of specialists from all over the world, and that may even be vital to your venture. Even large corporations will be able to see some benefit in having employees as high up as c-suite working remotely. Won’t offices in the traditional sense largely die? 

Remote Work is the Future - just not from our Couches

Well… probably. At least, they will in the sense of everyone traveling to a specific place of work for their business. 

But, that same Buffer study found that 99% of those surveyed wanted to work remotely for at least a part of their working career. So, what’s the answer? Well, it likely looks like a shared desk in a coworking space. As Amir Salihefendic, CEO of Doist, said, “unlike what you might see on Instagram, working remotely doesn’t mean you jet set to exotic locations to drink Pina Coladas on the beach. We need to acknowledge that isolation, anxiety, and depression are significant problems.” 

A coworking space offers the best of both worlds; it gives entrepreneurs, freelancers, and remote employees not only a place to go to work every day, but somewhere to find likeminded people, too. Coworking spaces redefine the line between home life and work while offering people the social aspects of office life. That’s not to mention the collaborative opportunities that can arise from these friendships. 

Isolation and Mental Health is a huge Factor

This sense of isolation and need for interaction will only increase as we see younger generations join the workforce and start their own ventures. Millennials have already influenced change in how we work and communicate, but for the younger generations, instant messaging through apps like Slack will be the norm (and is already over 12 million daily users as of Oct 2019). While this may lead to fewer meetings and easier collaboration, it means further opportunity to go days without speaking to another person verbally. 

Beautiful Coworking Spaces are the Future

Coworking spaces provide the flexibility employees, freelancers, and entrepreneurs are looking for, but without the intense isolation that comes from actually working from home. Many companies have been trialing the open-plan vs. cubicled office to mixed results, but one thing is for sure, innovative, beautiful office spaces that offer flexibility increase productivity and happiness. Some of the largest and most forward-thinking companies today, like Google, Apple, and Uber, are all investing huge sums into creating offices that utilize beautiful architecture, green spaces, and flexible working environments. 

The growing popularity of coworking spaces is reflected in the statistics – there were close to 19,000 coworking spaces worldwide in 2019, and that is expected to reach 26,000 by 2025. Industry leaders like WeWork, Mindspace, and Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) are leading the way, but there are many other coworking spaces that can offer more flexibility and intimacy

Our coworking space, PEAKZONE, is designed to offer just that – a cosy and modern environment with a boutique hotel design that offers flexible ways to work. Only a handful of desks are available and so we guarantee that you feel rather at home than like in a huge coworking space with a bunch of people that you don’t know. We offer individual desk space or a shared desk, meeting rooms, and lounge areas at no extra cost. That means the entrepreneurs, freelancers, and remote workers in our space can move freely around. They can work alone or collaborate with other individuals and small businesses working in our space. They can easily come and go to meetings in and around Munich. We provide the essential office infrastructure so the businesses inhabiting them can thrive. 

Any coworking space like PEAKZONE is the solution to the isolation, lack of communication, or even lack of focus we can suffer at home. It provides a big, open, modern workspace to small businesses who would often find themselves renting small, dark spaces for the early years of their business. Client meetings can be held in one of our modern and open meeting spaces around a shared desk, rather than in coffee shops or other spaces rented at high-cost. 

It’s this kind of flexibility that we need as entrepreneurs, freelancers, and remote workers, who are trying to develop what the future of work will look like. If you’re based in Munich, or travel here often for work, feel free to book in for a tour (or take our virtual tour) to see if PEAKZONE is the coworking space for you.