It seemed only a few short months ago that coworking became one of the hottest trends in the modern commercial world. Entrepreneurs who were looking to start their own businesses were relying on coworking to reduce their costs while long-established corporations were pivoting to coworking arrangements in an effort to rejuvenate their aging business models.
These days, though, coworking is incredibly imperiled by the continued spread of COVID-19, which has made shared workspaces incredibly undesirable for the time being.
Will COVID-19 mean the end of coworking?
Here’s a review of how the coronavirus is putting a strain on the budding coworking industry, and how specific companies are reacting to it.
There’s really no denying that COVID-19 has been an unmitigated disaster for most of the coworking industry. After all, most “non-essential” businesses have been forced to temporarily shutter their operations.
Others have simply pivoted to remote work models that are effectively the opposite of coworking arrangements in many ways. Certain coworking companies, too, such as WeWork, have been hit hard both financially and in terms of the press coverage, they’re receiving.
We can thus conclude that coworking is seriously hurting thus far, but that doesn’t mean that COVID-19 will spell out an end to coworking entirely. After all, every crisis must end sooner or later, or else it’s not a crisis and is instead simply the norm.
Just take a look at how COVID-19 has helped tarnish the already-damaged reputation of WeWork. People are now writing opinion articles in Bloomberg openly calling for WeWork’s investment partners to walk away from the company due to COVID-19.
They cite the fact that COVID-19 has already sparked massive cultural changes and will likely continue to do so; by arguing that the future will be much less tolerant of things such as handshakes, let alone shared workspaces, critics of WeWork are asserting that now is the time to permanently abandon the company. Chances are, many investors will agree with them.
WeWork is just one company, though, and can’t monopolise the entirety of the coworking industry no matter how hard it tries to do so. Alternative reasons that COVID-19 may not be the end of coworking are still worth entertaining, at least for now.
Digital workspaces can’t last forever
There are few reasons to believe that the ongoing digitisation and remotisation of our workplaces will last forever. Many people enjoy working from home, after all, but countless others require the social presence of others to remain on-track.
This is simply to say that self-isolation and quarantine measures won’t be permanent and that coworking arrangements could yet thrive when the economy re-opens.
Regardless of whether coworking makes a comeback, we are likely to see an increase in flexible workspace solutions.
This crisis has taught us that commercial flexibility is of the utmost importance, after all, and that being able to roll with the punches is critical if we want a functioning economy that can weather modern shocks like a pandemic in the 21st century.
Coworking thus may not so much die as evolve over the next few months, as coworking companies would be ideally situated to pivot to flexible workspace solutions that fall short of coworking but don’t quite qualify as traditional work arrangements.
The United States passed a mammoth US$2 trillion spending bill that was the largest in its history as a response to COVID-19, for instance, but that was likely just the start of what’s to come.
Health experts are telling us that COVID-19 will endure for months to come at a minimum, which means billions if not trillions of dollars in additional stimulus spending will be forthcoming. How the coworking industry benefits (or doesn’t) from that money will have a huge say in whether or not it has a post-COVID-19 future.
While it’s likely too early to predict the ultimate demise of the industry, there’s no denying that the coronavirus has permanently crippled some already-ailing companies such as WeWork.
Other, smaller fish in the industry will find it impossible to secure enough stimulus money to endure. The coworking industry and the related trend of flexible workspaces will endure, however, if only because some individuals will always find it profitable to offer innovative office arrangements to the marketplace.
Source: e27
