Freedom to Work: The Rise of millennial workplaces
Authored by Vinayak Agrawal, Co-founder and CTO at myHQ. A Nasscom report released late last year called India’s startup base as the world’s third largest, after US and UK. Startup tracking firm Tracxn pegs the number of startups at over 44,000. A majority of these startups would also qualify as micro businesses, meaning that they employ 1-10 people. Now, consider the prohibitively high rentals for quality office space in most Indian metros, along with added costs of managing and running your own office and it would be obvious why most startup founders prefer to run their business from one or the other coworking spaces. Now, most of these startups typically employ millennials. Often, they just don’t have the financial resources to hire experienced professionals with 10 or more years of experience. It is however common to see experienced professionals come together as founders and start building a team, but people they hire invariably have less than 10 years of experience. The scenario only begins to change once a startup has raised sufficient capital and is in a position to afford senior talent. The millennials that make up most of India’s startup talent pool come with their own set of expectations and demands when it comes to the work spaces and environment. Traditional working styles and cultures are not attractive enough, and same is the case with old-style boring office cubicles. Remember, this is a generation that has grown up watching TV shows like Silicon Valley and Suits and have preconceived ideas of how a startup’s office should look like. And no surprises that they find exactly what they hoped for in a well-appointed coworking or shared office environment. Plug and Play generation The millennials and the post-millennials (or Gen Z) are used to consuming content or information on wireless digital screens, most likely a laptop or a smartphone. They are also used to ‘friction-free’ experiences: from ordering a cab or a pizza via a mobile app to instantly listening to their desired songs, movies or TV series via the online streaming services. Bring them to an old-school office environment with lots of friction, from paper-based processes to restrictions on meeting rooms, printing or scanning, and they are quick to lose their interest in the job. On the other hand, many employers pamper them with hassle-free, on-demand office infrastructure, with enough flexibility in terms of time and location. This is another reason why millennials love modern co-working spaces. An app allows them to book a meeting room, request tech support or even discuss new ideas for cafeteria menu with their peers. Modern coworking spaces intuitively understand the millennials’ love for social networking and bring it to their work environment. Work and life balance India’s metros are notoriously congested; and large companies often deal with a significant fraction of people who commute for two or more hours every day just to get to office and back. Startups typically have little luxury for exacting such punishing commutes, especially when most of their employees are already working harder and longer than average. Once again, the coworking model comes to rescue to the millennials as many progressive startups allow remote working from ‘offices’ spread throughout a large city. For example, a popular startup located in Gurgaon’s Sohna Road would rent a few seats in Noida and Connaught Place coworking spaces, allowing its Noida and Delhi employees to work from a nearby office rather than commute all the way to Gurgaon every day. Following a hub-and-spokes model for distributing your teams across multiple coworking spaces is in fact almost a necessity in more congested cities like Mumbai and Bangalore. Incidentally, in our experience, this model is also appealing to large and established companies with distributed workforce across a city. They typically allow their field staff to log in remotely, from a pre-approved set of coworking spaces, and avoid wasting time commuting to and from the main office. It is therefore no surprise that coworking is the biggest trend in the commercial real estate markets across India. Currently there are well over 200 coworking players in India, with multiple models to meet the rising demand. The number of seats in coworking spaces is predicted to nearly double or treble in the next 2 years. Recognising this demand for affordable, small-sized workspaces, many cafes have also re-strategised their business models and are now offering space for work to freelancers and entrepreneurs during daytime. From Social and Café Coffee Day to FLYP by MTV, the options for on-demand coworking space seekers are growing by the day. “Office” of future As India enters a new decade and more people join the workforce in 2020, there will be further push for an independent, fast-paced, dynamic environment, which outgrows desks and chairs, but also offers a comfortable workspace and easy commute, offering more than just workstations when one reaches their “workplace”. Coworking spaces have accelerated connectivity, flexibility and ease of doing business. One of the key findings in CBRE’s report on “The Future of Work and the Workplace” suggests that new emerging aggregators have the potential to revolutionize the commercial real estate market, allowing tenants and different building owners in cities to contribute wasted and unused space back into an ecosystem of available space. With more and more people accepting a flexible, dynamic work-environment, better work-life balance at benefits at par with those at larger corporates, there is no doubt that co-working trend is here to disrupt the real estate sector.
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