Telework and working in distributed teams are becoming a standard for many companies due to COVID-19 and may become even more commonplace after the pandemic passes.
The new reality of the world has upended the status quo for lots of players in the remote work industry, including coworking spaces, and they have to reinvent themselves if they want to stay in the game.
In the opinion of Pedro Oliveira, co-founder of Landing.Jobs—a candidate-driven tech talent marketplace—coworking spaces need to adapt to the emerging needs of modern-era workers by "distributing" themselves.
"Instead of concentrating all their resources in big coworking spaces in downtown Lisbon or downtown places in cities like London and Berlin, they should operate from more distributed locations," Pedro, an entrepreneur based in the Portuguese capital, told Via news.
He says this change is necessary because mainly high-skilled workers used to work from coworking spaces before the coronavirus outbreak but now workers of all skill levels desire to change their work routines.
"Many people have realized that they can work from home or move out of big cities. So coworking spaces need to adapt as companies will be less seen less as a rough space and more as a hot-desking space."
The changing landscape provides great opportunities for coworking spaces, Pedro said, adding that they can make the best of this situation if they tweak their business models.
Distributed Teams Conference
Believing in the power of distributed teams, Future.Works—a sister project of Landing.Jobs—will be holding a free online conference from June 15 to 17.
The event, which features top industry experts, will focus on three topics, namely distributed teams and people management, culture and communication, and workspaces, infrastructure, and security.
Message to Founders
Asked about his message to entrepreneurs and the community of startups, Pedro said companies should do their best to "hold on" and "survive".
"Just surviving is great," he said, adding that many startups are going to die and their death under market pressure should be considered "normal".
Pedro also argues that it is "probably not the best time" to establish a new startup.
"It'd be better to wait a couple more months and launch when the economy starts to get back on track."
Pedro says he chooses to remain optimistic despite the dark period many businesses across the world are going through.
"I believe good times will come again. And hopefully we will not go back to where we were and will be more aware of the importance of work-life balance and the economic dynamics that need to change."
A lot of good can come out of the coronavirus experience if people change their mindset and look at things through a different lens, the co-founder of Landing.Jobs commented.