#remotework doesn’t have to be lonely
#remotework has racked up 1.3 million posts on Instagram. A relatively new term, it is now used widely thanks to the disruption to work lives that began three years ago in March 2020. Today many people are happy not to return to a long daily commute. The genie is not going back into the bottle.
If you live in Haslemere and used to commute into central London you have probably gained around three hours extra per day that otherwise would have been spent on public transport. There can be a cost saving too. For some, the new ways of working have enabled a move further out of London than would have seemed feasible in the past.
There are clear advantages to the new flexibility of remote work. But somehow the term remote doesn’t really sound appealing with its implication of isolation. Thankfully the increasing number of co-working spaces in regional towns mean that working remotely does not actually mean feeling isolated. Co-working is what it says on the tin, working alongside or with others.
For a freelancer or for someone whose colleagues are distributed around the country, sharing workspace with others in the town centre can make for a much improved work-life balance as well as increased productivity. We are also seeing more companies coming to HasleWorks to bring their teams together, using our well equipped meeting room as well as the shared desk-space.
In January one of our members brought colleagues from as far away as San Francisco for a two day strategy session, accommodating them in the town centre at The Coppa Club. The same month another company, an intermittent user of HasleWorks, combined their planning sessions in the meeting room with a delayed Christmas party in town. Another chose Haslemere over London for a team gathering, finding it a more cost-effective option.
We have two companies that use HasleWorks on a weekly basis with colleagues sitting together at desks throughout the day. They book the meeting room when they need to bring in others for more in depth discussions, to share ideas and to plan for the future. In fact one group has designed and launched an entire new product here under our roof. Spending time together in the same room is, it seems, essential for innovation.
The market for regional co-working spaces such as HasleWorks is being driven to a large extent by the new normality of remote work. But, in this context, remote can actually mean sharing work-space with people from completely different sectors or inviting colleagues to our beautiful town to generate new ideas and share a meal together. There is now a social dimension to ‘remote’ and it is making for much happier work lives.