Transcript: Co-Working with Wendy Spreenberg Part II

Hello, I'm Brittany Campbell-Turner and this is the Constructor Podcast, session number 12. Hello and welcome to this episode of Constructor. This podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certainty in their decisions about the construction projects. I want to help property owners foster trusting relationships with your project teams, help you to lower risk, be under budget and on schedule in your construction projects, and exceed your end user's desires. Hello everyone, thank you for joining me today.

If you haven't done so already, don't forget to subscribe for a weekly email from me at Constructor.com. In my weekly email, I'll be letting you know when a podcast is released, once a week. Thank you for listening already, but your subscription is truly an encouragement, letting that there are consistent listeners out there wanting to hear more about continuously improving construction methods. Last week, I started a series of interviews with Wendy Springberg. We discuss in this three-part series information that is useful to anyone who is interested in starting a co-working community.

Constructor.com slash 11 talks about the characteristics that a co-working host must have and how a host should think about impacting their community. Check it out if you haven't listened to it yet, Constructor.com slash 11. In this part, part two, we discuss how understanding the community translates into the necessary design and architectural elements in a co-working space. In part three, Wendy and I will talk about making sure a co-working business model is sustainable to ensure the business owner's success. We talk about the right designers to hire, the best software solutions for your business so you can ensure success.

Next week, tune in for part three. Without further ado, here is part two of my interview with Wendy Springberg. ...into more of the design constructability aspect. This is the Constructor podcast and we're talking about the best way to build it, right? That's the tagline, if you guys don't know, the best way to build it.

Just curious here, what has changed about the workspace model because of how people are working? You mentioned a little bit about the desire to have company, the company's desire to have people work in a specific space is not as high of a priority and it's trending that way per DeskMag. Tell us a little bit more about how this workspace model is changing. It's changing a lot, which is really interesting. We've been actually studying the coworking topic since 2007.

It's before WeWork as the biggest well-known name in the coworking world has become. They started in 2010. We heard about this prior to that and started exploring it. What we found at the time were groups that wanted to start, again, it was a business who said, gee, I'd like to bring my friends on in and I'm going to take down 1200 square feet and I'll get four or five other people to share it with me. That has evolved and nothing but open plan and some desks and that has evolved specifically to people who are taking this on again as a full-time business rather than this is my part-time job or my second gig, if you will, because my true gig is doing X and my part-time gig is providing shared space for somebody.

The design has taken a much more sophisticated approach and much larger scale. What we find is most sustainable are spaces that are at least a minimum of 10,000 square feet now, significantly different from that 1200 square feet that I referenced a moment ago. It's a mix as well. It's really the sophistication and awareness of multiple work modes as well as the desire for an entirely different user experience. It's about the experience.

That's our tagline is that we help people create experience, not just space. It's all of those sensory pieces to it. How much natural light comes into the space? Fewer offices on the exterior all throughout the space. There's much more open plan but also allowing workstations and open seating to be part of the design element close to the windows or unobstructed at that point.

We're also seeing soft seating and lounge type space as well as varying postures. You're seeing clearly stand up desks or desks and table heights that actually change mechanically. There's not as much of that simply because of the expense, I think, and the overall expense. You're having high top tables in cafe areas, standard height tables, lounge seating with a side arm, for example, on the chair. Color is a very important aspect of this.

How gender neutral it has become because more and more females are taking on memberships and co-working spaces where sometimes it used to be more male dominated. 60 to 70% of the members used to be male and now it's becoming much closer to 50-50 where 54% now of co-working members across the US at least are female. And finally, that aspect of white noise. Is there a white noise element enabling people to work in open plan but also still have some buffering, sound buffering, that whole idea that you referenced earlier of having separate phone booths so if you're in an open space and you really need to take a phone call or take a confident, have a confidential conversation, you're enabled to go off into a small phone booth area.

12 person conference rooms anymore. They might just be huddle spaces of 6 to 8. But then, believe it or not, people are actually getting into trying to instill a branded scent into their space. Not just the yummy smell of coffee for those of us who like coffee, but something that might be more bringing in some more natural scent, a green scent that inspires the feeling of nature. So there are things along that line that are really changing the workspace model based on a sensory experience, not just a design experience of an office with a glass door.

More of that is also happening, but it's much more of that holistic user experience and really space flow, how people really want to work and the fact that they work in multiple dimensions between very serious focus to more relaxed creative thought process. Since we're humans and we have very different work modes throughout the day. I think that's so interesting. I really liked the idea about the branded scent. I actually have some relaxing, calming scent burning in the background and I thought that was really interesting that you mentioned that at this moment.

Because I think that kind of helps me get into the mode of working with more focus. So very funny that you mentioned that. But no, outside of that, on a broader scale, that multiple dimensional space where you can work in many, very many different ways with many different purposes, I think that's hugely valuable. And I guess the next question that kind of is spurred from what you just said here is how does a host know what way his or her community may swing, right? Before they even get the members.

I'm just thinking, well, what comes first? You get the members first and then build out the space? How does that work? How do you provide consultation about how a space is designed? Those clients of ours that have been most successful, believe it or not, are sort of doing it simultaneously, which makes a big challenge to someone who's potentially opening a co-working space.

But if we think about it this way, Brittany, where say we're taking on 10,000 square feet, part of that is the exploration of and there's so much foundation towards building your budget and your business plan before taking on something as large as 10,000 square feet. So clearly there's a lot of thought and logic and support that needs to go into that thought process. We're also real estate brokers, so we help the client define how much space they really need. What is the business plan around that?

And then simultaneously say, let's start building this conversation with people that you may already know within your own work colleague community, who may not be potential users, but who are there in your camp who want to support this concept for you. So going back and asking your business colleagues from maybe very different perspectives, someone who might have that creative design experience, another who might have that financial experience, and pull them as opposite ends of the spectrum just in my mind to say what is important to you to inform yourself of other perspectives that may not come to mind for you.

The second process then after you've started down this road of creating the business plan and talking to those colleagues is to then really get out in your community and set up coffee meetings or if there are meetups in your area or meeting with your Chamber of Commerce. And if it's a large Chamber of Commerce like the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, I don't recommend that because it's not personalized enough. But for example, in Chicago, we have neighborhood business associations and chambers of commerce. So go to that more local Chamber of Commerce that's more intimate and start having conversations with the members of that chamber, even if they're members of a different commercial basis like the dry cleaner, like the accountant, like the baker down the street and start having those conversations and saying, finding out from them what they see happening in the community and trends.

You can also just search online as to what are the local events happening in an immediate neighborhood that you're experiencing and starting to see what seems to be going on in my own community and my own neighborhood and how do I maximize or capitalize on some of those events and experiences. So from a design standpoint and business model standpoint, I think that research of figuring out what somebody wants and what percentage is again going to be male to female and what their business needs are. Is it a younger population who isn't necessarily thinking about family and work-life balance, but they do want to travel a lot?

Let's just throw that out as one scenario. Or it could be very more of a suburban type location or a residential community type location where family is super important. And so how do you provide the opportunity to maybe talk to the daycare down the street and say, gosh, when parents are dropping off their kids, they can work from here. So there's so many different facets that you need to explore based on the community that you're going to be establishing your co-working space to serve. I'm really excited about the fact that there's so many ways you can take in order to investigate and research about your community.

I mean, surveys to potential users are great. But I do like the idea of really getting into your neighborhood business associations or chambers of commerce. I think that's definitely a great way to get a good understanding of the trends that are happening in a particular community. Very cool. And then male to female, how would you investigate that?

Super challenging. I think though that, isn't it? And part of your design, your design has to be considered to be gender neutral, as neutral as it possibly can be so that it can attract the greatest percentage of everybody who will be part of the community. So while you might have lots of angular square offices and it's a grid plan for your office space, how do you choose the furniture that might have rounder edges or softer pieces to be complementary? So there's one aspect from a design standpoint.

But figuring out the percentages, I think the best vehicle might literally just be starting a meetup group. And I think that's one of the things that can work really well to say, look, I'm exploring starting a co-working community. And I really love, I'll host at whatever venue you want, if it's the local cafe or the best brew pub right down the street, and just start a meetup group. And anybody who seems to be interested in the topic can inform you and start building the community that way.

I'm sorry to tell your audience that it doesn't happen magically and it doesn't happen overnight. It really takes a lot of work and focus to create the right sustainable model. And it really is a passion and a labor of love to make all the pieces come together correctly. Yeah, it's a real difference between creating a space for your own corporate environment, if you're one company that has a thousand employees, because you know exactly what they need, you know exactly how they work, and you can go to those specific people directly and say, this is how your team works, what can be provided to help you improve the way you work.

It's a lot different when you're getting all these different perspectives and trying to make a design that is either flexible or is a stationary design that will work well for that. So I think you really do have to be very open-minded and creative. But it's dynamic and it sounds really fun. Oh, you're absolutely right about dynamic. Good point.

Really good point. So I guess moving on to my next question here that I have about space flow, you talked a little bit about that and about the different needs. Do you know of some stats that talk about the heads down versus collaborative space? Is there certain percentages that work well better than others? My initial instinct, it's an instinct versus a statistic, is that while coworking spaces have been much more open plan, we're seeing a trend towards users really wanting more dedicated space, whether it's a desk that they can be there every single day versus an office with a door.

But it's a desk that they know when I come in and I sit down or even if it's three days a week, that's my desk, that's my spot, so that they can kind of claim it at least to be able to work from because they know from a productivity standpoint, they have a spot, if you will, as opposed to being ad hoc. But I still think from that standpoint, from a dedicated standpoint, I would say probably 70% of users, just again, instinct, not documented statistics, 70% of users would really prefer having something dedicated versus ad hoc because of the frequency by which they're going to be spending time at the coworking location.

But I also think from an open plan versus closed office or focus area, I still think it's probably 20 to 25% is open and 75% to 80% is open. 70% is more closed or focused and even that could be a larger room that is closed off that has six to seven desks but can be quieter. Very interesting. I would not have thought that that would be the case. I would have thought that people would be more, they would prefer to be in a more open space that's not dedicated to that closed off or quiet environment.

I would have thought they would have wanted more people around so they could collaborate and things of that nature. Well it's an interesting evolution. So what we've also seen is that while people may not want necessarily feel the need or based on an expense they can't quite afford that closed off office that's private just to them. There's also this, I think, again my instinct is saying a psychological balance where you can work in close proximity in an open area where there may be 10 or 12 people but where there are 50 people in a really broad open plan, there's a potential for a lot more noise and a lot more distraction.

So I think that's what's starting to happen is there's still open plan but more of it is being enclosed whether it's officially with a door or it's partial height drywalls separating and segmenting spaces because there's just too much potential distraction if it's completely 12,000 square feet of nothing but open plan. So I think that's the transition that we're experiencing, Brittany. So it is a combination of what your instinct is telling you where you think more people want to work in open plan but they want to work in controlled open plan.

Does that make sense? Absolutely. And as you're talking I'm kind of thinking through if the control from a host perspective, say for instance they can't do that physically with their space, maybe from a timetable perspective, maybe from 10 to 12 it will be quiet time in this area. I'm just kind of thinking about the potential ways people could approach that. Absolutely.

And we may see that trend moving forward. That's a great idea. Very interesting. Okay. How does the flow of the space, you kind of mentioned that a little bit before, how has that impacted by how people work?

I think what we're seeing too in space flow is understanding, I think there are times of day that each of us have our own office circadian rhythm rather than the bigger picture circadian rhythm. I personally am a very productive morning person so I really like the head down focus. I'm really concentrated on the doing in the morning and really in the afternoon is more of my creative thought bigger picture scenario. That's how my circadian work rhythm goes. And so what would work really well for me is that space flow of saying okay in the mornings as long as here's the more of an enclosed space or a focused space where I can really put my head down and make that happen and the work flow and the space flow enables that where there's a quieter area that's tucked away or at least partitioned off from the

more public space that might either be the cafe or another type of space where again beer and ping pong are active. But in the afternoon I may want to sit in where beer and ping pong are actively flowing and happening and soft seating and I may even want to work at a high top table versus something that's quieter and standard height desk size because my posture needs to change throughout the day in order for me to feel my most productive as well. So that's just a description of how my work day works but it may be exactly the opposite or different configurations for each individual.

So I think the space flow is something that you consider as you're building that for each type of work that someone's going to conduct within the space. And then clearly having those private spaces for meetings and confidential conversations or even presentations that someone has to have based on bringing in a client or their own team to make presentations together. So it's really I think the space flow is really informed by the way that the productivity happens in the space regardless of what time of day you have that type of activity, that work activity.

And as you're saying that I'm curious as to whether the furniture solutions that are chosen are driven by that as well by how that circadian rhythm if you will for each person changes throughout the day. Yeah and I think some of the furniture that can be delivered, one of the things that we think of very specifically in this type of an environment Brittany, is as mobile as possible. So configuring the space that even if it's the open plan work area that might really inform, hey we want to have just four of us grab these soft seats and have a little confab.

Or gee we need to sit at the high top table. And so how is each piece mobile and flexible to be moved to different parts of the space even as it informs, okay so this is the focus space, this is the public space. This is sort of the library context, this is again the social context. So how does that inform how the furniture is going to be used is really based on how flexible the coworking space leader, the coworking management wants to make it, how flexible they want to make their space overall.

So that comes back again to those design decisions that you're making while you're doing your research right? Right. And choosing those pieces of furniture or partitions even that could be, yeah that could be modular or flexible. Yeah even to the point where double duty a white board on wheels acts as a potential work space partition. So how can it multitask, how can a piece multitask for you as well?

Yeah very cool. Okay I like that, I like that a lot. So it sounds like to me that the understanding of how people work will probably drive a lot of those furniture decisions early on even before you start putting walls in. Just even before you start thinking about where you put walls in enclosed spaces because you really have to be cognizant about what the pods of areas are going to be and kind of program the space in that way and then see how are you going to section off areas to be purposeful for a certain type of work.

Hmm very very cool. So you agree. I have one caveat to that though. I agree that you absolutely have to make these thoughtful decisions in the very beginning and one caveat to all of that is we are all still human beings in the human condition. So once you furnish it and once it's there you may be surprised at how it actually gets used.

So it'll be very interesting after the first even six months of observation of gosh we thought you know this soft seating might be used in this certain way. Wow nobody likes what we've chosen or gee it's being reconfigured in this way. Maybe we need to get a few extra pieces or a few different pieces or gee the high top tables there are none left because everybody loves working at those. We need to substitute the low end tables for the high top tables because there are no nobody's sitting in the low top low low level tables everybody's sitting at the high top tables.

So one of the things you'll want to be aware of too is despite what you think your user experience is going to be sometimes it really is revealed that it's used in a very different manner but that's what you're there for as the community leader is to make sure that you're responsive to the actual needs of your members moving forward. That's a great point. It's not just all this research that's taking place beforehand when you're meeting with your Chamber of Commerce. We are humans and if we allow you know if we allow the flexibility and as a community manager let humans be humans up to a certain point where it doesn't violate somebody else's human need then we're in great shape and we really can create a very distinctive community that is responsive to that set of community members that we have on site.

Very cool very cool and I find that even with working with some of my clients they do come to those same conclusions that you know how we anticipate and we ask them very many times you know will you work in this space? Will this serve you well? They get those same responses no this doesn't work no one uses this space because of X, Y, and Z and they do have to do something. So it makes sense that it's the same process that you have to go through and then you know who knows the same community members that you have here in a co-working space in the beginning they may change over time so the needs also may change over time.

Absolutely perfect point. Okay good good good. Yeah. Alright so kind of transitioning then into our third topic. I hope you enjoyed part two of this series about co-working.

Wendy got us thinking about the most important amenities to include in your co-working space design. Find the show notes at constructor.com slash 12 and don't forget to subscribe. Find part one in episode 11 and the last part is coming out next week in episode 13. Goodbye for now.