When he graduated with a master’s degree two years ago, Timothy Nash found it was a lousy time to find a corporate job in finance. So, like a growing number of Canadians in a competitive job market, he became his own boss, working out of his home in Toronto.
Unfortunately, he quickly experienced the downside of life without an office.
“I started by trying to work at home but I found that was distracting and really depressing,” said Mr. Nash, an adviser in sustainable investments. “So I’d set up my laptop in a coffee shop and I ended up spending $10 or more a day on lattes and getting just as distracted.”
He credits finding a “hot desk” in a shared work space – which cost less than his latte habit – with helping him turn his efforts into a successful business.
Self-employment has become increasingly common in the recovery from the recession and Mr. Nash is one of thousands of independent contractors and entrepreneurs that are creating a boom in “co-work” facilities.
The traditional approach
“In the past two years, the demand for short-term office spaces and temporary desks has exploded because thousands of people who were let go from their job have started up their own businesses,” said Chris Fyvie, senior sales representative for commercial real estate company Colliers International in Toronto.
Traditional office leases are a minimum of three years, “which is too long for people who don’t know where they will be next year and too big a commitment if they only need the work space for a few hours a day,” he explained. “So many try to set up in isolation, in their rec-rooms or make daily treks to a coffee shop or a library with free Wi-Fi.”
Ultimately, many start hunting for a more business-like setting.
The boom in temporary office space is a phenomenon across Canada, said Wes Lenci in Calgary, vice-president of Canada for rental office space company Regus PLC based in Dallas. Over the past 10 years, the company has opened a total of 30 office centres in Canada, in and around Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. This year, Regus is opening 11 new sites, including smaller centres in Halifax, Barrie, London, Ont., and Fort McMurray, Alta.
Shared offices operated by Regus provide desk space with a lounge and wireless Internet. Services like copying and printing, the use of meeting rooms, and administrative staff to do spreadsheets, expense accounts or sales projections are available for extra charges.
A daily rental of a private office with Internet and phone service costs about $50, but many opt to book a short-term office for a month or a year, and this seems to be a barometer of a growing business optimism, Mr. Lenci said.
“At the start of the year, most our new office clients were startups and individuals, but in the past couple of months we have seen a surge in corporate accounts,” as companies send employees to stake out new markets or reopen branches of the business they shut down when the recession hit, he said.
Office within an office
Opportunities for renting temporary space have grown because some companies that downsized during the recession now have more space than they need. Or, companies that are hoping to grow are committing to more space than they are using immediately, Mr. Fyvie said.
A twist on this approach is ING Direct’s Network Orange, a floor of a heritage building the company recently renovated on Yonge Street in Toronto, which has been set up as a co-work facility.
ING uses the first floor as an ING café similar to financial advice centres it has opened in Calgary, Montreal and Vancouver. A company call centre is on the third floor, but the second floor was not needed immediately “and we decided we could use it to offer support facilities for startups, home businesses, the small business community,” which ultimately could grow and turn into clients of ING’s services, said Brenda Rideout, chief marketing officer for ING Direct.
