Co-working: a force for good
It was the sight of the old bank buildings sitting empty on Haslemere High Street, back in September 2020, that first prompted the idea for HasleWorks. What was to become of local retail, hit already by significant changes in consumer behaviour, and how would it fare following the disruption of lockdowns? At the same time the station car park remained relatively empty. This raised another question of whether people would return to commuting to an office five days a week, having managed to work remotely in a way which would have seemed out of the question before March 2020. It seemed possible that these two things could be reconciled, that a building in the town centre could be repurposed to provide a central location for people to work locally and this could increase footfall to drive more trade to local businesses.
By the end of 2020 we had identified a suitable building and, following extensive refurbishment, we opened our doors in August 2021. Since then we have learnt a lot about the opportunity and the challenge of remote working and we have confirmation that our assumptions about the value of being able to work close to home but not at home are correct. Some of our members are freelance or run small businesses, others are employed by larger organisations and have been given the option of not having to go into the office every day. People talk about being more productive at HasleWorks, being able to focus, of the relief of not being confined to the same four walls every work day but also of not having three hours of their day taken by a commute.
This is summed up by Tom Stevenson, Head of Business Development at Up Learn, who joined HasleWorks earlier this year.
Tom says:
"The two-year debate on working from home vs. going into the office seems to ignore remote working because that wasn't an option during lockdown. Now that the restrictions are lifted, co-working spaces like HasleWorks give people the chance to separate work and home life, the chance to do focused work and meet like-minded people."
It is encouraging to see that business has returned to the town centre and that some new businesses have opened their doors. We know that we make a contribution to local trade by the number of coffee cups and food wrappers that accumulate in our bins during each work day and at some point we will do a more scientific analysis of our value to the local economy. Given our central location, we receive many visitors including the founders of other new start ups, notably online ventures looking for collaboration and mutual support. We have discovered that we are certainly not the only business idea to have emerged from the era of lockdown and that many people want to work alongside others and share the experience of being economically productive.
It is important to know that we are delivering social and economic value. In fact that is the whole point. HasleWorks was not motivated by profit but by a commitment to the town and a desire to see something positive come out of the draconian lockdowns. The founding directors are not remunerated and we will donate any profit we make in the future to local causes. And so another question is whether community based co-working spaces provide an opportunity for impact investment, a subject for a future blog.