How Coworking Can Make Cities More Equitable
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At Radius, a passion-driven creator community in the heart of downtown Erie, PA, our members have been talking a lot about how work and life should look post-pandemic. Among many observations, everyone is in agreement that “going back to normal” is not an option.
We need to move forward. In hindsight, we think most people would agree that work and life had a lot of room for improvement even before COVID-19 swept across the planet. The pandemic laid bare many systemic issues with our culture of work for all of us to see. Among them: people working themselves ragged to make ends meet, broad and growing socio-economic inequality, and barriers for minorities to find higher-paying jobs.
So, how can coworking play a role in making things better? From an outside perspective, coworking spaces may appear to be merely a shared office or rented desk. But, true coworking is about bringing people together for mutual support and enjoyment—a community where people readily share resources and knowledge with each other no matter the trade or size of their business. Genuine coworking aims to foster the free-flowing exchange of ideas and enthusiasm that can create new opportunities for people, get small-businesses off the ground, or help an established company grow. Groups like ours have an important part to play, not only in our city, but any place they call home.
What Coworking Is and Isn’t
Formally speaking, coworking is a membership-based arrangement where people share equipment, ideas, and knowledge in a cooperative work environment. Typically, members of a coworking space are self-employed or remote workers. From this arrangement, people share a variety of benefits, including, but not limited to:
Cost savings (we all split the costs!)
Networking (aka we hang out a lot)
Access to resources (if you need it, one of us probably knows how to get it)
Shared knowledge (you’re smart, we’re smart, let’s trade notes)
Healthy workplace culture (so much better to work with funny people than to work alone)
More casually, it’s a community of small-business owners, remote workers, and freelancers that come together as a community to work and live better.
In recent years, large corporate commercial real estate companies have bogarted the phrase "coworking" to market their flexible workspaces. Coworking became an industry. They offer flashy designer aesthetics and posh locations in big cities--at a premium cost to their members. Enigmatic leaders preach the good word of coworking while lining their pockets to fund their yacht-rock party lifestyle. To be fair, they solve their own kind of problem, a real-estate-cost problem. But the coworking movement focus on fostering safe and inclusive communities that care primarily about helping all the people who join to flourish.
Let’s Talk About Equity
Equity and equality not only sound similar, but people often use them interchangeably. Comparing and contrasting the two is vital in understanding how coworking can contribute to a more equitable city.
The concept of equity is based on the understanding that everyone is born into a different set of circumstances. Defined further by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, equity “involves trying to understand and give people what they need to enjoy full, healthy lives.” However, equality involves giving all people from all walks of life the same tools and opportunities to carry out their lives from the moment they are born.
From an extra computer monitor and a printer to internet connectivity and networking, coworking fosters an equitable environment in which people can access resources and opportunities they need to create and find meaningful work.
So, What is Coworking's Contribution?
Coworking plays a special role in making cities more equitable. It helps generate new job opportunities, extend people’s social groups, provide affordable solutions for small businesses, and promotes local products and services. More specifically, it does a few things really well that everyone would like more of:
Reveals Job Opportunities
There is a kind of job opportunity alchemy that occurs within coworking groups. With so many members meeting, sharing ideas, and talking about their needs, work materializes out of our daily conversations. For new freelancers and small business owners, this part of coworking is a huge help.
Moreover, coworking groups can connect people to job opportunities that wouldn’t regularly be available in a particular area. The range of people in these groups is enormous, and each person brings unique, broad networks of other people they know. When we meet, build trust, and get to know each other, we are able to bridge opportunities in our personal network to any member of the coworking community. This is especially impactful when coworking groups setup their space in struggling neighborhoods, which are often physically removed from where the work opportunities are located. Between the low cost of membership, resources in the space, and friends willing to help, people end up with far more options than going it alone.
Take us, for example. Located in one of the lowest-income ZIP codes in the U.S., residents have an opportunity to get connected and provide services that may not be easily available in the area, such as:
Accounting & Finance
Admin Support
Audio and Video Production
Consulting
Customer Service
Graphic Design
Human Resources Management
Social Media Management
Transcription Services
Translation Services
Web Development
Writing
The opportunity to turn these services into side hustles or full-time self-employment can supplement or be a way out of lower-income positions.
Supports the Community
Whether they support local nonprofits or small businesses, many coworking groups support their local community in ways that tackle unique local challenges. For instance:
Pacific Workplaces/NextSpace host annual food drives
The Coven, a coworking space for female, non-binary, and transgender people, gives one in every five memberships away to low-income individuals
Radius Cowork focuses on localism; supporting local vendors, injecting outside money into the economy, and finding quality work for local tech workers and creatives
Offers Affordable Solutions
More than half of entrepreneurs (63.9%) use their own personal savings to start their businesses. So, the tools of the trade must be as affordable as possible, especially for minority business owners and freelancers. What are those tools? Well what each coworking groups needs will vary, but at Radius we’ve come together and outfitted the space with:
300/300 symmetrical fiber internet
Podcasting studio with light boxes, LED panels, 4k webcams, tripods, and Surface Pro
Video editing computer with Adobe subscription
Video conferencing equipment (monitors, webcams, lights, blue-tooth conference mics/speakers)
Stacks of legal pads, note cards, sticky notes, envelops, and all the little office supplies
Tool Lending Library with everything from wrenches and ladders to power tools and paint rollers
3D printer (the same model you can attend free classes for at the local library!)
Coffee, snacks, and everything you need to keep that blood sugar up
Why is that so important? Microbusinesses (with one to nine employees) cost an average of $3,000 to start. Between meeting people in a coworking group and using modern platforms such as UpWork, aspiring freelancers and business owners can make that kind of budget last much longer by keeping costs low. We’ve seen it make the difference by affording enough time to solidify a sustainable client base.
Creates a Better Work Life
The percentage of freelancers in the workforce grew from 28% in 2019 to 36% in 2020. Many people decide to freelance because they enjoy the flexibility, variety of work, and even the income. But between employee layoffs and increases in the cost of living while wages remain largely stagnant, freelancing has often become a necessity.
In fact, Forbes reported that nearly one in three people in the workforce have multiple jobs. While you would think taking on extra work would help you bring in the big bucks, the majority of people with side gigs (68%) are still making less than $50,000 a year.
Whether taken up by preference or necessity, that side hustle, or even full-time hustle, doesn’t have to be tedious. Working in a coworking space makes work-life better by filling it with great people. Between the coffee, conversations, and peer-to-peer support, putting in those long hours can actually be enjoyable.
Allows People to Fail “Softly”
While it may have its appeal, freelancing is not easy. It often lacks benefits, job security, and cannot guarantee success. Consider this from Indeed: as of 2021, the average income for a freelancer is only $26,262, or $1,859/month… and that’s before taxes.
What’s more, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 20% of U.S. small businesses fail within the first year. By the end of their fifth year, roughly 50% won’t have made it. After 10 years, only around a third of businesses have survived.
But those failures don't mean a person crashes and burns. With so much infrastructure in place at a coworking space, the cost of bootstrapping a company is minimal. And failures also provide valuable experience, many of which may lead people to new, higher-paying positions.
A Place to Grow Together
The vast majority of freelancers and small business owners who joined Radius have been successful. They’re grown from fledgling startups to local staples and starving artists to highly-paid consultants.
Whether you’ve chosen to freelance out of necessity or you’re taking the leap to being your own boss, Radius is here to help you tap into the community and resources you need to get through the hard times until we all reach the good, together.