Membres

HOTSPOT Workhub - The Future is Hybrid

Reinventing workspaces

Bucharest, June 2021 - The most innovative coworking space on the Bucharest's office market, HOTSPOT Workhub, hosted the first post-pandemic conference on the complex challenges and directions towards which the work environment is heading.

The panel brought together at the HOTSPOT Workhub headquarters in Calea Griviței 82, six speakers with experience in coworking, management consulting, HR and real estate: Pauline Roussel, CEO Coworkies, Tudor Popp, co-founder of Hotspot Workhub, Sandra Jitianu, IDEOGRAF Management Consultant, Alexandru Ionescu, Country Manager Trenkwalder, Andrei Crețu, co-founder of Pluria, and Alexandru Orzea, Tenant Representation at JLL Romania.

Appearing as a natural reaction to the need for alternative offices of freelancers, coworking spaces have gained great popularity in recent years. Pauline Roussel demonstrates this in her book, "Around The World in 250 Coworking Spaces," emphasizing the importance of human interaction in facilitating creativity. The desire of companies to be part of a professional community has led to the emergence of a new job, that of Community Manager, she says, which should exist in any company.

The fears of employees, but also of employers are essential in understanding the new trends of coworking after the pandemic, said Sandra Jitianu. These include: reducing the office space, perpetuating shifts and eliminating the fixed office, which makes people worried that they will not have a personal space, that they may get sick or that their privacy is reduced. The IDEOGRAF consultant suggested that it was time for leaders and companies to focus on results and less on fixed frames of space, which induced the idea of ​​control. By default, to give employees confidence and freedom to work in coworking spaces.

Andrei Cretu highlighted the biggest challenges that companies have in reinventing the new modus vivendi, namely: anxious micro-management, lack of trust in their team, real-time communication and lack of pleasant solutions for connection and socialization, needs identified as highly important by employees. The solutions pointed out by the founder of Pluria focus on unsynchronized work - for a greater freedom of creativity, more involved socialization, related to need and not to old taboos, which emphasizes the need to focus on coworking spaces with diverse, dynamic facilities leading to the concept Work from anywhere.

From the perspective of HR, Alexandru Ionescu emphasized the desire of Romanian employees and not only to find the flexibility which would allow them to work from anywhere, keeping the possibility of coming to the office, but also of temporary relocation to other cities, countries etc. Companies need to clarify the costs and benefits of flexible working, rent coworking space and test results efficiency. It is clear, he believes, that flexible work will become the norm.

Tudor Popp, Managing Partner HOTSPOT Workhub, with a solid experience in the area of ​​real estate and office solutions, stressed that in the new coworking spaces it is essential to be able to offer integrated access control solutions and secure wifi, which meet the standards of data security required by large companies. Added to these state-of-the-art technical solutions, premium services, architecture, professional furniture comfort, optimal lighting and ventilation, but also spectacular design determine more and more companies to turn to new spaces with flexible and coworking offices.

Now more than ever, these flexible spaces, ready to receive employees quickly and at any time, freeing employers from heavy leases for classic offices, have become the solution that large companies are looking for after the COVID-19 crisis. First of all, a proximity office will  lead to an increased professional efficiency and to the re-involvement of the employee in the company culture, dangerously diminished during the work from home period.

The fear of competition, as well as that related to data security in a coworking space, were expressed more and more often by employers, highlighted Alexandru Orzea. It is important for an IT manager to be present in the discussions related to the flexibility of the way of working, in order to discuss and technically understand what a space can offer.

HOTSPOT Workhub offers flexible private offices, coworking areas and a conference room in the center of Bucharest, in The Mark building in Calea Griviței no. 82 - 98. The concept and the first space of this kind, equipped with integrated solutions and premium facilities, was developed in 2019 by Tudor Popp and his business partners from REC Partners Germany and was launched last year, out of the desire to bring in Romania the standard of work in international trends.