Coworking, Flex-Office Space, Executive Suites: What’s the Difference?

Are you still working from home or is your team trying to decide how you will come back together after sending everyone home to quarantine? Many companies are contemplating foregoing the long-term office lease for a more flexible office solution like coworking. What will the new workspace even look like when you all come back together?

The traditional office space has changed, and we believe it has changed forever. Hopefully, commercial office space will continue to evolve to meet the needs of today’s workers.

If you find yourself or your team in search of a new solution, let me shed some light on your options:

1. Executive Suites
   

   According to Wikipedia, the oldest use of the term “executive suites” referred to the suite of offices on or near the top floor of a skyscraper where the top executives of a company worked, usually including at least the president or chief executive officer, various vice presidents and their staff.Today, the term “executive suites” tends to describe a suite of smaller offices that individuals lease or rent, usually under some sort of contract. These are typically offices that may include the use of conference facilities but do not focus on community or educational events for members.

2. Flex-Office

   Depending on who you ask, this term can mean many things. Flex-office solutions are sometimes how people describe an office space that has changed from cubicles or all private offices to workbenches, coffee bar seating, and customizable and moveable walls, all making a workspace more flexible or moveable. It can also be how a space is built out before a tenant even moves in—providing a more generic or flexible design for companies that do not want to pay for elaborate tenant finishes.Wikipedia uses the term, “lightly zoned” for flex-space.

3. Coworking (or Co-working)

   Coworking is a fairly new term (2005 it was believed to have been coined by Brad Neuberg, who encouraged tech workers to gather and form a community) and is thought to have originally meant the use of an office or other working environment by people who are self-employed or working for different employers, typically so as to share equipment, ideas, and knowledge. I love this definition a lot!Regardless of industry or company, people can, of course, share resources in a larger office space such as internet, copiers and printers, cleaning crews, conference rooms, kitchen supplies, and more, but they do also share ideas and knowledge! Whether they are gathering around the coffee and sharing ideas or getting advice, or they are attending networking and educational events together, it is a community of people encouraging and supporting one another.

We may be slightly biased here at the Village Workspace about coworking, but we live in a sharing economy now and why would you need to pay for extra square footage to have a kitchen, fitness center, conference rooms, café tables etc. when the right coworking space has all of these and pays to maintain them. Members only pay only for their individual workspace and yet they get access to all of the shared space. This can make it hard to compare pricing with traditional office space that is based on price per square foot.  That being said, don’t go looking for those apple prices in the apple pie space.

So, if you’re an entrepreneur working from home or a remote work team trying to figure out how to manage office space that will have 20 people one day and 5 people the next, you might want to consider how coworking can provide the flexible solution (and community) you need. You just might find a few new friends willing to share ideas and knowledge.

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