HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world, recently signed a dealOpens a new window with co-working space company WeWork to lease spots for more than 1,000 employees at an office complex in London. While the multinational bank has leased spaces from WeWork before, primarily in AsiaOpens a new window , this is by far the biggest such agreement.
The space that HSBC signed up to occupy is slated to be one of the largest co-working complexes in the world, according to WeWork, which is fast becoming the most important co-working space provider.
Okay, so what? Co-working has been a thing for a while – explodingOpens a new window over the past decade. Take the example of WeWork: It has more than 500 working spaces in 100 cities around the world. It raked in $1.8 billion in revenue last year (not quite enough to cover its $1.9 billion loss), and earlier this year the company was valued at $47 billion.
So, if the investors are any indication, co-working is clearly a big trend.
But the HSBC deal is another level, which indicates a potential future for co-working – and for how workplaces are organized across the corporate world. And it’s not just about how the office is arranged, although that does have a little to do with it.
What HSBC is doing by signing on to a deal to give up its own potential office with its own specific workplace culture indicates a willingness to mix its employees among the milieu of the wild, entrepreneurial world. And it has good reasons for doing so.
A recruiting gold mine
In its ideal form, there’s an organic intermingling that can evolve in a co-working space. When freelancers or entrepreneurs are sitting nearby, it’s natural to get to know them and learn how they tick – workwise, and on a professional level with peers. That kind of information is invaluable for recruiters, and all too difficult to come by in the traditional hiring process.
As in all recruiting processes, it’s a two-way street. Not only do the proximity and possible collaboration provide a natural way to get to know potential recruits, they also allow independent workers to get familiar with corporate culture. That, in turn, will attract future employees who already assess themselves to be a good fit – and base that assessment on actual real-life data.
A breeding ground for ideas
Moving a segment of the workforce to a co-working space allows employees to benefit from individual intermingling. That means employees can engage in conversations and build casual professional acquaintances that can lead to idea generation and creative problem-solving.
Beyond that, there’s a real potential for more serious collaborationOpens a new window . Co-working space like WeWork’s, which is slated to be a significant complex and comes with fees for use, generally attract ambitious self-starters unafraid of non-traditional working models and accustomed to creative problem-solving. Obviously, work collaborations are also a good platform for recruiting – in addition to being real opportunities for fresh ideas.
Encourages a clear corporate vision
One concern that businesses could have about signing up for a co-working space is the loss of corporate culture, as employees intermingle with freelancers in a physical space provided by a third party. I would argue the contrary: It’s precisely the potential for an absence of differentiation that encourages companies to develop a clear vision and culture and make specific choices in support.
It’s easy in a bespoke space to allow the office to speak for itself, for the culture to be imbued and unspoken. But by being forced to articulate the company values and to take concrete and tangible steps to uphold them, co-working spaces could motivate companies to become more focused on what the future holds.
And the future is what co-working spaces are all about: embracing the flexible possibilities that can generate collaboration and innovation.