If you really want to be honest, the space where you spend most of your hours of the working week should be a place that you can feel as comfortable, protected and inspired almost as much as you would be in your own home.
In that sense, our Zemun workspace has been quite a challenge to set up, organize and bring to open because we wanted to offer more and something different than a “coworking space” that almost everybody was already familiar with. So when Zemun space was ready to greet its new residents I decided to send out some personal invitations here on LinkedIn with a short pdf presenting the Zemun work space to people that I thought might be interested. Many of you have sent words of encouragement, complemented the work space but one sentence was repeated many times in the emails I received: “This looks great and we would jump to the opportunity if only we were a smaller team. We have overgrown the coworking type of space.”
It got me thinking about when is the company or a team “too big” to become the part of our community. Or was it just a broad misconception that was somehow created without taking a closer look at what it really was.
Generic large office spaces have become too cold, figuratively speaking. They are so deprived of any personal touch and provide the bare minimum of commodities. You still worry about ordering supplies of water, sending invoices to a cleaning service and you still don’t have a nice relaxing space to go to for just 15 minutes when you want to clear your head (no, the office kitchen doesn’t qualify as a nice and relaxing space and you know it). And if you are bound to spend 8 or more hours in such impersonal spaces where lifting your feet up is a no-go then you better be prepared for the consequences it might have on your work performance, and your company’s overall performance.
Let’s go to another “extreme”. Year by year, there are more coworking spaces that are emerging offering this “homey” and cosy feel of the space, where work chairs are ridiculously uncomfortable but hey, there’s a vintage rug on the floor. And you are right - those small “homey” coworking spaces are something your company might have overgrown. You need a formal, highly equipped and large meeting room to invite your clients over, you need to know that no noisy and suddenly bored freelancer is going to disturb your team’s workflow. And we get that.
That’s why finding the right balance in our work spaces is very important to us. Desks and private offices tend to go more on the formal side, but are encompassed in a warm and friendly environment that is inspiring and comfortable. We know that you have some important clients who are not impressed by “millennial patchwork” and a “fashionably messy” space. Nova Iskra decided that work time and play time should be kept separated but when you know that your “play room” is just one floor down, and a relaxing balcony overlooking the city is a short walk from your desk, you can focus on your work time more efficiently.
Also, we wanted to go big this time, and that will be our mindset for the future. It means that bigger teams and companies counting even more than 50 people will be able to join the community and have their own private floor or a large private office to preserve their own unique office climate, but at the same time will be able to mingle, associate and have fun with a wide community of professionals and potential business partners in an inspiring and not stress-inducing generic office space.
You and your 10, 20 or even 50 people strong team will feel comfortable and relaxed, taken care of, and still given the privacy and freedom to preserve your habits and formal setting of an office space but with a slight twist of informal that will benefit your performance immensely.
