With more and more small businesses taking on remote workers or allowing employees to work from anywhere, more employers are questioning whether to sublet offices or pay for office shares.
There are two aspects to this issue: Some people are looking for a place their employees can work from, while others have too much space in their current office and are looking to rent it out for extra monthly revenue.
Is it a good idea though? Can your employees be productive outside the office? How about your current employees -- will they be distracted by outsiders in your office?
Should You Rent Out Space in Your Office?
Let’s say you’ve got three spare desks in your office just sitting there, with no one working at them. People used to work at them, but they’ve since started working remotely.
Depending on your company’s location and how much office space usually goes for, you could make an extra $500 to $5,000 per month for those three desks. If you think there aren’t people out there who would be willing to pay that, you’re in for a surprise. If you think there’s no easy way to reach those people, you’re in for an ever bigger surprise.
Websites like www.shareyouroffice.com exist to put people with office space in touch with people looking to rent office space temporarily. Picture it as the Airbnb of empty desks -- putting owners in touch with renters.
Is it worth it to rent out this office space though? If you live in an area where office space isn’t all that expensive, it might not be. You could easily make the argument against renting out your office space if those three desks would only bring in an extra $500 per month. It might not be worth having the disruption in productivity from strangers around for that type of money.
However, if you live somewhere like New York City or San Francisco, those same three desks could bring in up to $5,000 per month. At that point, any decrease in productivity might be made up for by the extra cash.
Should You Pay for Office Space for Your Employees?
If you have employees with remote work arrangements, you might want to consider paying them (or giving them a stipend) for office space to work from. Now, why would you do that when they are already enjoying the privilege of working from outside the office? There are a few reasons, and they all tie back to productivity. Some people simply don’t work well from home, given how many distractions they have there. Sure, they can always go work from a coffee shop, but will they? Also, what happens if they have technical problems, or the internet isn’t reliable enough for them to do their jobs?
Should you consider renting them a space on www.shareyouroffice.com? There’s probably not much point renting space in someone else’s office when they were working just fine in yours.
Co-working spaces can be a great solution in this case. They’re usually largish rooms with several big tables, often with monitors for rent, and some smaller meeting rooms. Co-working spaces are starting to pop up everywhere.
Some outsourced teams work exclusively from co-working spaces, with their employer paying for their membership. Depending on its location, an unlimited co-working space membership can be anywhere from $50 to $300 per month per person. This is often much cheaper than paying for office space for an individual or small team. It also gives you much more flexibility if a member of your team decides to move to a different area.
Many small businesses give their employees a monthly budget for a co-working space, then let them work out their membership on their own.
As remote working becomes more popular, it’s important to adapt to how modern employees work most efficiently. Whether this means renting out empty spaces to other workers, or paying for employees to have a reliable space, is up to you, and will depend on the needs of your individual small business. Expecting all employees to spend the whole day at their desk though, looks likely to become a thing of the past.