Trends: Coworking – the new working style

Co-working is not a fad, but the new working style, which is now becoming the ultimate all over the world! From an idea sparked by a handful of digital nomads 15 years ago, shared offices are becoming a model for delivering business services. Why are we so sure?

One of the most telling pieces of evidence is the fact that the average age of coworking employees is 36, an age at which people already have an established vision of the advantages and disadvantages of different work practices. And indeed, the best coworking spaces in the world live up to the expectations of flexibility that this trend preaches. They are suitable for all types of personalities, even the most introverted, and this is another plus that gives them an edge over traditional offices.

We flip through some historical and statistical data that explains how this structure became the strongest working trend.

The first shared office is considered to be the creation of a workspace by a group of like-minded people – 17 computer engineers, in order to more easily exchange work ideas. This happened in Berlin in 1995. They call it “hacker space” or c-base. The term “coworking” entered later – in 1999, introduced by the American video game designer Bernard (Bernie) De Koven. It refers to the way it works, not the space, but either way, the name became popular very quickly.

The first real coworking hub (which, however, was not called that yet) was created in Vienna by two Austrian entrepreneurs at the beginning of 2005. They gathered under one roof in an old factory a diverse team of freelancers, entrepreneurs, small business companies and architectural studios. A few months later, in the summer of the same year, Brad Neuberg and Chris Messina (the man who “invented” the hashtag on social networks – the # symbol on Twitter) opened the first official coworking space in a neighborhood in San Francisco.

In 2005, there were only three shared offices in the world, and today there are more than 5 million employees working in them. They are spreading at breakneck speed – in the period from 2014 to 2018 alone, their number increased by 205% globally.

It is not by chance that co-working offices are called “home away from home” – 59% of the surveyed employees in European shared workplaces stated that they prefer to have 24/7 access to them.

Adapting to coworking makes 89% of its community members happier, and 83% of respondents feel less lonely because the atmosphere in their shared workspace is pleasant.

84% of colleagues claim that in the shared office they are more motivated and engaged in their work because they have a productive and favorable work environment.

72% or about two-thirds of all shared office spaces become profitable within 2 years of opening.

Statistics show that about 10% of coworking revenue comes from renting out office space, another 10% from providing event rooms, another 5% from food and beverage consumption, and 5% from tickets for events.

The most expensive coworking spaces are in Switzerland. If you want to have a desk in a comfortable chalet in the Swiss Alps, it will cost you about 310 euros per month, according to statistics from 2020.

The growth of the coworking industry is mainly generated by startup entrepreneurs and freelancers. Freelancers, consultants, and telecommuters account for half of coworking center members, 40% are startup employees hired to perform duties in a shared office, and 10% are employers.

A study of the 50 countries with the highest number of shared offices per 1 million citizens shows that they are growing the most in Luxembourg, Singapore and Ireland.

68% of shared office workers claim to have gained new business skills as a result of being part of a coworking community.

68 are also the percentages of people who share an office with colleagues who say they have become more focused in their work and have improved the performance of their tasks.

The coworking practice gives peace of mind – 60 percent of those asked say that when they come home after work, they feel balanced and calmer due to the fact that they feel satisfaction from what they have done during the day and a sense of belonging to the working society – their social life is in full swing and they don’t feel isolated despite the covid-restrictions.

43% of coworking employees are under the age of 30. The remaining 47% are distributed as follows: those working in a shared office in smaller cities have an average age of 38.5 years, those in large cities have an average age of 34.5 years. Small business coworking staff have an average age of 40, followed by freelancers in their late 30s (average 38). So the average age of co-workers in a shared workspace is 36.

The majority of people who chose this type of work practice – 85% have an academic education. 41% have a bachelor’s degree, another 41% have a master’s degree, and 4% have a doctorate. It is also surprising that the number of women masters is greater than the number of men masters.

Almost half of co-working freelancers – 46% are women, but they also leave this community faster when they become mothers, statistics show.

In shared offices, 50% of women over 35 and 70% of women over 50 have one or more children.

Co-working offices accelerate the business growth of companies – 82% of colleagues in them are convinced that this type of working practice expands their professional horizons due to their daily interaction with specialists in different fields, determined by the concept of sharing.

30 percent of workers describe themselves as extroverts, 22% declare that they are introverts and 48% say that they are a mix of introverts and extroverts. This means that the coworking concept is attractive to all types of people.