While doing my usual browse through my favorite websites I came across Piers Fawkes‘ Article on A Deeper Look At Co-Working on PSFK.
These days it is becoming more common for companies to open up their work-places to other businesses. There are various reasons to do this (aside from the obvious shared-cost benefit)
With the move towards collaboration many companies prefer to have fellow creative close to hand in case there is an opportunity to develop or to share a project. There is also the added bonus of another set of skills in the same office that can be tapped into.
The general trend seems to be the feeling of community that people get from working together. There is a more social aspect to how people interact and this makes for a better working environment. While many companies are hesitant to join forces with others, for some the benefits are too real to pass up.
So if you have spare space in your office it might just benefit you to rent it out to a firm that you work with. Not only will you save on the rent, but you will also have them close at hand when you need to deliver on a project. You get the benefits of hiring a freelancer while having them around all the time, paying you to be there…
Interesting topic.
When I was still at Saatchi AtPlay this was part of our ideas.open philosophy. We invited people in to come and share our space, use our internet, etc.. We didn’t charge rent as we figured we had as much to learn from individuals as they from us.
We did however make sure that the people coming in were doing so for the right reasons. It worked out pretty well. We got extra heads thinking about ideas and made some new friends along the way.
I WISH I’d known about that back in the day. I will however by making the most of this information going forward to pop into the AtPlay offices to share inspiration.