Once your center is launched you need to think about its strategic steering. To drive your coworking center, follow our guide to assessing the center’s performance, managing your daily routine and, lastly improving your activities and profitability.
Follow Key performance indicators
Last week, we introduced you to a basic set of KPIs to evaluate the service delivery of your coworking center. You should make a weekly update of the following KPIs : the office and meeting room occupation rates, your customers’ satisfaction, profits generated by services such as the bar, the attendance level of your coworkers to events you hosted, etc.
A good manager faces his responsibilities: he analyses and makes decisions!
Once you assembled your KPIs, you need to go through them and compare them to your initial objectives and make decisions according to what you identified as a problem. For example, if your occupation rate is low, you need to concentrate on your communication strategy. Is your center referenced on the Internet? Has the press campaign been correctly working? Has the word to mouth started already? You need to apply this methodology and question every aspect of your business strategy.
Adopt a dynamic control ethic!
Then to drive your coworking center, be responsive: adjust your offers to your coworkers’ expectations. When a service is considered useful but is not fully utilized, do not wait to react. Launch a notification campaign, maybe even a game to obtain free credits… Or simple, lower the price of that service! Do not neglect communication within the center: setting up a weekly/monthly newsletter to inform the coworkers of new services is the best way to make it work. You should also be aware of what is going on with your coworkers’ lives… What are their projects? Maybe Hannah is opening her very own coffee shop… And she would be happy to see her ex-coworkers’ come by!
Choose a democratic management system?
Let’s be honest: managing a coworking center is pretty tiring. It’s okay to say you are tired of doing everything on your own. You can involve your community of coworkers in the process. Firstly, you can collect their suggestions once a while (without compelling them). Their opinion can be enlightening. If you want to go further, you can put in place a sort of participative assembly, which will enable the coworkers to decide on particular matters with a specific budget. However, don’t forget that your coworkers are paying for a service and will hold you accountable. At the end of the day, you are in charge.
