Leasing an Office vs. Choosing a Coworking Space

Originally published by The Haverford Voice. Reposted with permission.

Leasing an office is a common practice for most businesses. It’s flexible and tends to be more affordable. Most companies lease offices to free up working space. Others are interested in getting access to great locations.

On the other hand, a coworking space is an environment that’s designed to accommodate people from different businesses who come to do their work. It’s often characterized by shared facilities and tools. So, which one is better, leasing an office or choosing a coworking space?

Advantages of renting office space

Renting an office space offers businesses the opportunity to tailor the space to suit their specific needs. Some of the advantages of renting an office space include.

Information privacy

Privacy is vital for every business. That’s especially if you are dealing with sensitive information. Renting an office gives you control over all the processes of handling clients’ documents. Depending on your budget, you can either rent a full-serviced office or just an open room. 

Some fully-serviced offices are equipped with tools for customer or visitor management systems like android kiosks. Greetly’s visitor sign software is one of the best applications you can use in the android kiosks to stay secure and compliant. Greetly complies with the principles of GDPR, and it’s one of the best Privacy Shield certified sign in applications.

Branding

When you rent your own office space, you can put your company logo on the sign above the door. Sometimes you can put it in the streets beside the office. When a potential client comes to the office, they will enter a space that reflects the company’s culture, values, and community. 

That means that the office space won’t be injected with the values of the other companies like in the coworking option. Also, you can add creative decorations to your offices to make them attractive.

Noise control and physical privacy

You can easily control the noise levels of your leased office to a reasonable degree. This is almost impossible with coworking as you can’t do much about your noisy neighbors. 

With the coworking option, you don’t even know who else is present in the room. Strangers are just within earshot or walk by your desk. This is enough to be disruptive. If you rent your own office space, you will have physical privacy as none of these will ever happen.

Advantages of coworking

There are various benefits of coworking. Let’s dive into some of the specific advantages of choosing a coworking space.

Reduced costs

Renting an office may be very pricey. Sometimes, you have to furnish the room, buy office furniture and pay for the other utility bills. With coworking, you have access to shared amenities. Still, you don’t have to worry about renovations, decorations, and janitorial services.

Workers who travel most of the time usually enjoy reduced costs as the payment options for coworking spaces are flexible. The costs vary based on the length of the contract and the type of space.

Boosted productivity

Sharing a coworking space with driven and focused workers enhances your productivity. In this case, it’s more difficult to slack off when the worker next to you is busy working on projects.

Too, physically walking to a space dedicated to working helps you regiment your schedule. You will feel motivated, unlike sitting in your office for hours.

Networking

When you share office space, there is usually a sense of camaraderie among the workers and the opportunity to network with each other. Most coworking spaces are symbiotic systems meaning that you can easily connect with potential partners, clients, and other professionals.

Here, you can have a day-to-day social outlet that’s beyond your team. You can share business challenges with the other members in the same room.