We’re living in a start-up boom and business owners have lots of fresh, innovative ways to grow their business. Co-working spaces and virtual offices are popular ways to subvert traditional office culture and provide more flexibility. This can really suit a young business that doesn’t want to make big investments yet and wants to minimize overhead expenses.
New tech makes it much easier to achieve this flexibility and virtual offices and coworking spaces, like the ones that we offer at Hyde Park House, are perfect for ambitious start-ups. So, how can you boost productivity within your team when you use co-working spaces?
Use Collaborative Tools
Making sure that you have marketing dashboards and management apps that allow you to keep on top of your work priorities, communicate with team members and delegate accordingly is crucial. Apps like Slack let you chat to colleagues, share files and prioritise, even when you’re in the same room, but if you’re working remotely in different places, it’s a great way to keep collaborating and sharing ideas.
Manage Disruption
If you’re working in spaces that other businesses are using then it can be difficult to concentrate sometimes. Using noise cancelling headphones is a really good way to zone out of what other people are talking about and zone in to your specific work tasks. You could also listen to music, podcasts etc too, but that can be distracting in itself! Making sure you have enough space or are suitably far away from louder areas of a co-working space can give you some peace and quiet to knuckle down and get some work done too.
Diversify
Sometimes, when you surround yourself with people that aren’t in your sector or related to your line of work, it can help you to spark some new ideas and find new perspectives. Co-working spaces usually have all sorts of different types of professionals and it’s the perfect sounding board for some of your new products or marketing ideas. Have a chat with someone and see what they think – objective perspectives on a project you’re very invested in can help you to see tweaks that need to be made or glaring oversights.
It can be great for your own mental wellbeing, which let’s face it, can take a battering in early start-up stages, to be surrounded by other professionals that have nothing to do with your business. It means you can have more positive work interactions in your environment, instead of trying to avoid eye-contact with your boss in the kitchen!
Flexibility
One of the best things about having schedules and environments that are more flexible as a start-up is the ability to switch up the status-quo and use creative ways to boost productivity and come up with new ideas. Take a walk and go for a meeting together with colleagues, head out and go to a coffee shop for some inspiration. Or stay in-house and hire out a meeting room to try some new ways to mind-map new concepts and chat in a different setting.
Take advantage of the fact that your environment and set-up allow you to make new rules and work in different ways.
To explore virtual office and co-working options, get in touch with our team at Hyde Park House.