By Bond Collective Staff
In the past, your business’s collaborative workspace was the conference room down the hall where your team got together to plan, strategize, and discuss current projects.
Now, however, the term “collaborative workspace” has taken on a broader definition. It has transformed from a small room in the corner of your office into a much larger shared space where like-minded entrepreneurs, teams, and digital nomads from a wide variety of industries work side by side.
This shift toward a coworking paradigm might seem like a potential distraction for you and your team, but it can actually boost productivity and improve the way you work.
In this article, we’ll discuss the productivity-boosting benefits of a collaborative workspace that a regular office can’t provide.
27 Benefits Of A Collaborative Workspace
1) Access To New Ideas
Access to new ideas is one of the biggest benefits of a collaborative workspace.
Working alongside and getting to know people from a wide variety of backgrounds, as well as tapping into their knowledge and creativity, allows you to absorb new ideas that you might not get from your industry-specific network.
These new ideas can boost your productivity by leaps and bounds.
2) Infrastructure
Taking care of the infrastructure you depend on, like electric, water, gas, internet, tech support — not to mention daily supplies — occupies a good portion of your workday. Even if you’re focused on a project, there are always minor jobs (e.g., refilling the toner and paper in the printer) that must be done before you can make any progress.
But in a collaborative workspace like Bond Collective, infrastructure is taken care of for you. You can cross those items off your to-do list and dedicate your energy to improving productivity.
3) Professional Image
A professional image goes a long way toward encouraging productivity in you and your team.
Working in a cubicle under harsh fluorescent lights may have once been the go-to method of the business professional, but now it’s all about open spaces and natural light. These are the design elements that will improve your professional image, impress your clients, and inspire you and your team to new levels of productivity.
4) Low Overhead
Productivity isn’t always measured by how much work you get done in a single day. Sometimes, it’s measured by how much money you can save in the process.
Coworking spaces like Bond Collective reduce the cost of overhead to almost nil. That allows you to focus your time, energy, and hard-earned capital on the more important aspects of productivity: getting more work done.
5) Networking
Networking is all about growing your professional connections to help your business succeed. With a healthy network of clients and industry professionals on your side, your productivity will flourish.
A collaborative workspace makes it possible to network with professionals outside your niche while you work. When you base your business, your team, or just yourself in a collaborative office environment, you combine networking and working into a single, productivity-boosting task.
6) Socialization
Working in your own dedicated office, at home, or at the local coffee shop can quickly become lonely and uninspiring. When that happens, productivity decreases dramatically.
The easy socialization in a coworking space can restore your productivity and even inspire you to new insights.
7) Flexibility
One of the many unique and beneficial aspects of a collaborative workspace is its flexibility.
You can expand and contract the space you use to fit your business needs at a moment’s notice. Doing so can help you save money and adapt to fluctuations in productivity that are inevitable in the business world.
8) Location
Location, like professional image, can have a profound effect on your team’s productivity. A cluttered, chaotic environment without restaurants, cafes, and other businesses nearby has a tendency to sap creativity and reduce productivity.
But a collaborative workspace, like those offered by Bond Collective, provides beautiful, curated environments in the heart of business districts across the country.
9) Motivation
Motivation is an elusive quality that can change for better or worse from day to day and week to week.
A collaborative workspace has a much more positive atmosphere when compared to a traditional office. This atmosphere — not to mention being surrounded by people who want to be there — can energize your motivation and inject new life into your productivity.
10) Comfort
Comfort may not seem like a crucial factor for the day-to-day activity of your business, but it can actually help your team stay productive while they work.
When you or your team aren’t thinking about how hard the chairs are or how you’d prefer a standing desk over a sitting desk, you can dedicate more energy to finishing tasks quickly with a maximum of creativity and inspiration.
11) Easier Hiring
Searching for the right hire is a difficult and time-consuming job. A collaborative workspace, though, is a ready-made talent pool just waiting for you to dive right in.
By networking and socializing with other like-minded individuals, you can get a feel for what they do and how they might fit into your business. It’s very much like an extended interview during which you can really get to know the other person.
Then, when you’re ready to hire, simply ask them if they’d like to join your team.
12) Work Opportunities
The same productivity-boosting benefit that was true for hiring is also true for getting hired.
Think of the networking and socializing you do in a collaborative workspace as a way to make yourself, your team, and your business attractive to others. That exposure may lead to more work for your business.
13) Fast And Easy Setup
A major drawback to changing offices is the amount of time it takes to get settled in and back to full productivity mode. With a collaborative workspace, all the hard work of setting up furniture, installing technology, decorating the space, and making sure the utilities are working is done for you.
All you have to do is show up and get to work.
14) Amenities
Many collaborative workspaces are more than just places to work. They also provide amenities that make it easier to keep your productivity levels high.
Services such as streamlined billing and booking online, access to multiple locations, and even unlimited black-and-white printing give you and your team the freedom to work whenever and however you deem necessary.
15) Community
There’s nothing quite like working alongside a community of your peers to reinvigorate your productivity. That’s exactly what you get when you work in a collaborative environment like Bond Collective.
The coworking space fosters a very real sense of community — a feeling that we’re all in this together — that can have a profound influence on the way you and your team operate.
16) Sustainability
A collaborative workspace is the very idea of sustainability. Multiple businesses work in a single office, essentially combining their environmental footprint into the same space.
This is in contrast to each of those businesses occupying its own separate office and consuming the resources necessary to keep them running.
You can help protect the environment and contribute to the sustainability of the workplace by basing your team and your business in a collaborative workspace.
17) Agility
Whether your business is just getting started or you’ve been at it for many years, growth and decline come in cycles and can strike when you least expect it.
In growth years, you need more employees to handle the load. In other cases, you may need to streamline your workforce so as not to hemorrhage funds that you can put to better use elsewhere.
That’s why it’s vital that your business maintains a modicum of agility. Taking advantage of collaborative workspace gives you that agility.
Bond Collective, for example, makes it easy to expand or contract your team’s footprint from one month to the next. You can work from dedicated desks in February and March; upgrade to private offices in April, May, and June; and then downgrade to first-come-first-served desks in July.
18) No Long-Term Lease
Keeping your business from being shackled by a long-term lease may not seem like a productivity-boosting benefit, but it keeps you and your team focused on the work at hand rather than whether or not you’re using your space to its full potential.
A month-to-month agreement, for example, allows you to reduce the amount of collaborative workspace you occupy when things get tight and save money for the lean times.
With a long-term lease, you are locked into a set payment that won’t change as your business does. That can be a real productivity killer when you’re trying to remain effective but all you can think about is the upcoming lease payment.
19) Protection Against Market Volatility
It’s an indisputable fact that markets go up and markets go down — often when you least expect it.
You can safeguard your business against market volatility by deploying your team in a collaborative workspace rather than a leased office of your own.
Whether it’s unused square-footage, the need for more or fewer team members, or just conserving capital for the next stage of development, collaborative workspaces can protect your business from volatile markets whenever they may come.
In a collaborative workspace like Bond Collective, your business will be more nimble. This ability to react to change — be it good or bad — in a timely manner can give you a leg-up over your competitors who are more exposed to the harsh effects of the market because their money is tied up in a long-term lease.
20) Expansion Into New Markets
For a growing business, there are few things more nerve-wracking than expanding into new geographic markets. Whether it’s a move across town or across the country, collaborative workspaces can help reduce the risk involved in setting up a new base of operations.
With Bond Collective, for example, your Texas-based business can occupy a private office in New York City while it investigates the feasibility of opening a branch in the area.
If the expansion is viable, you can increase your workspace footprint as necessary. If the expansion isn’t viable, you can return to your main headquarters no worse for wear.
You can’t do that with a long-term lease.
21) Quiet Spaces
Space for quiet might seem counterintuitive to boosting your team’s productivity, but many people still need time to themselves to process the ideas of the day and to really dig into the tasks they’ve been assigned.
In fact, many businesses find that setting aside 30 minutes, 60 minutes, or even 120 minutes a day for uninterrupted work (i.e., quiet time) will actually improve both employee and team productivity overall.
Bond Collective understands that there’s a time and place for socialization and teamwork as well as quiet reflection. All of our collaborative workspaces provide designated areas for both activities.
22) Cleaning & Organizing Done For You
The cleanliness and organization of your office space have a powerful effect on your team members.
Not only does a dusty, disorganized workspace send productivity spiraling down, but even if the space is tidy, you and your team may worry about who’s going to clean it next. That’s a major drain on your productivity.
At Bond Collective, we ensure that our collaborative workspaces are always clean and organized so neither you nor your team has to worry about it.
Instead, you can focus on building your business into a success.
23) Collaboration
Chances are, your team could boost its productivity with some insights from an expert in another field.
Maybe your team is struggling to come up with a viable app. Or maybe you can’t seem to figure out a way to resolve conflict amongst team members. If your business occupies its own office space, you have to go out and find someone with the skills you need to get your productivity back on track.
A collaborative workspace, on the other hand, puts you in close proximity — often side-by-side — with professionals from a wide variety of business types.
This close proximity allows you to collaborate with CEOs, marketing reps, graphic designers, editors, photographers, and specialists of all sorts.
24) Inspiration
When your team works on one product or service hour after hour, day after day, they tend to form a tunnel vision of sorts.
It’s necessary to do this from time to time, but when they’re stuck with the same problem over and over again, their creativity, their drive, and their productivity begin to suffer.
In a collaborative workspace, there’s never any shortage of inspiration. You and your team are always surrounded by unique individuals with new and innovative ideas.
Strike up a conversation in the kitchen or the lounge with a freelance coder, writer, or entrepreneur and you’re likely to find ways of thinking that you hadn’t considered before.
25) Mindset
For fledgling businesses, first-time managers, and new teams alike, it can be difficult to take the business seriously and maintain productivity when you’re doing most of the work at your kitchen table or a corner booth at the local diner.
But when you make the switch to a collaborative workspace, you and your team members create a business mindset that you can’t generate any other way.
A business mindset means better focus, improved creativity, increased motivation, and, yes, better productivity to help you get the job done right the first time.
26) Reliability
Directing your business’s activities from your favorite cafe is fine initially, but the uncertainty associated with working from home or from public places — it’s too noisy, it’s hard to concentrate, you can’t find a seat — is counterproductive to building productivity in your team.
To really give your business the best shot at success — and maintain productivity in the process — you need reliability and stability.
A collaborative workspace provides that reliability and stability (the space you need when you need it) so that you don’t have to worry that the noise, crowds, and seating options will affect your team’s productivity.
27) Support
As an entrepreneur, business owner, or team manager, it’s all too easy to begin doubting what you are doing is right when it comes to how you run things and how you maintain productivity.
This self-doubt can cripple your efforts to make your business a success. It can be even worse if you isolate yourself by working from home or a public place. Even in a crowd, you can be by yourself.
In a collaborative workspace, though, you and your team are surrounded by fellow entrepreneurs, business owners, and teams who can provide support to help you push through your self-doubt and take your productivity to levels you’ve never experienced before.
Bond Collective Provides Even More Benefits
If your current office space is less than ideal, your productivity will suffer. But you can recapture the focus, creativity, and high morale you need by relocating to a collaborative workspace like Bond Collective.
At Bond Collective, you can choose from a variety of temporary office space options, such as:
Open-plan coworking spaces
Conference rooms for 5-20+ guests
And when you partner with Bond Collective, you don’t just get a beautiful space that fits all your needs and boosts your productivity. Each collaborative workspace also comes with exclusive benefits you can’t find anywhere else.
Whether you rent by the hour, the month, or the year, you’ll get:
24-hour access
Custom build-outs
Comfortable furnishings
Access to small and large conference rooms
Networking events
Daily on-site cleaning
Bike storage
Rooftop lounge area
Photo & sound studio (at Gowanus location)
Complimentary fresh fruit
Complimentary beer, coffee, and tea
Bike storage
Private meeting & phone booths
Office showers
Guest reception and greeting
If you’re looking for a spacious, well-appointed collaborative workspace to boost your productivity, take advantage of any one of our Bond Collective locations in the United States — including New York, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Illinois, Tennessee, and Texas — or call us today to find out more about everything we have to offer.
For more resources to help you manage your business or to learn more about the advantages of coworking spaces for distributed teams, digital nomads, remote workers, and businesses of all kinds, visit BondCollective.com today.