Why your small business may never need a private office space

With the advent of co-working spaces and the increase in remote work, you may never have to invest in an office space for your small business.

Like many other cities with a thriving entrepreneur culture, Nashville is a hotbed for co-working spaces. These spaces along with advances in remote work have eliminated the need for many small businesses to purchase or rent their own private office space.

You may never need to rent or buy an office if your small business has…

A small team

The most obvious reason for not renting or buying a large private office space is a small team. Many of the small businesses that most benefit from co-working spaces are solo entrepreneurs or freelancers, but even teams with a few employees can be successful without a private office.

Though there’s no set rule for how many employees is too many to make co-working or remote work a viable option, you should be able to tell when things are getting too difficult to manage.

If you’re already working from home and are thinking about hiring your first couple of employees, check out the price a co-working space and remote work options before committing to a lease. You may find that these options make more financial sense than taking on the overhead of a lease.

A collaborative culture

One of the most-touted advantages to co-working spaces is the collaborative environment. Some of these facilities now have a carefully curated crew of entrepreneurs, freelancers, creatives and professionals that all help each other succeed. That kind of supportive environment can help you and your team flourish.

If you value collaboration among your employees, and dream about being surrounded by other amazing professionals rather than working from a coffee shop or your couch, co-working may be the answer.

Task-based roles

Remote work is becoming more and more popular in many industries including healthcare, administration, training and customer care. Many of these remote positions work well because the roles are task-based. When performance is easy to quantify, it’s easy to set benchmarks for remote workers to hit.

If your small business has a lot of task-based roles, you should think seriously about remote work to save money - and give your employees more flexibility to get the job done on their own schedules.

Team members you can trust

While all of the previous points are important, co-working or remote work won’t be an option without trust. If you don’t trust your employees to get their work done, you may think having them under your watchful eye is the only way to ensure things run smoothly.

This kind of thinking can be debilitating for a small business’s growth. If you find yourself with a lack of trust for your employees, examine your thinking carefully. Do you have a good, evidence-based reason for not trusting the employee? If so, consider why you’d want them on your team.

If your employees have given you no reason to be suspicious, you might be unintentionally creating a toxic work environment. No one likes to feel distrusted without reason, so consider loosening up the reins a bit to see how things go.

There usually comes a point when it’s no longer viable to run your small business from home or a coffee shop. When this point comes, think carefully about your alternatives, like co-working and remote work, before jumping right into an expensive lease or buying an office space. The increased flexibility, collaboration and potential cost-savings could help take your small business to the next level.

Click here to see a breakdown of the co-working spaces in the Nashville area.