Following the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies throughout the U.S. have been trying to figure out how much office space they need as they shift to a hybrid work model, The Wall Street Journal reports. While more businesses allow their employees to work remotely part of the week, they still want them to work at the office a few days to help teams better collaborate. So, on any given day, an office could be full or empty.
Flexible office space firm Codi is helping businesses address this issue. The company operates approximately 50 furnished, private offices and coordinates office sharing. The same set of desks, conference rooms, whiteboards and snacks are at multiple companies’ disposal.
The setup somewhat resembles a timeshare rental for offices — they only pay for the days when they will likely use the offices. Approximately 35 percent of Codi’s customers lease an office for less than five days a week, Chief Executive Christelle Rohaut told The Wall Street Journal.
The office timeshare concept is more geared toward smaller businesses and startup companies that keep most of their sensitive data on mobile devices like laptops vs. onsite servers or filing cabinets. For example, machine learning platform startup Predibase CEO Piero Molino noted his company keeps everything in the cloud. His company pays about $6,000 a month to use Codi’s downtown San Francisco office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Half of the company’s employees are based in the Bay area and about eight will work in the office on a typical Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Frontier founder Elliot O’Connor opted to take space at Codi’s San Francisco office — 900 square foot ground-floor space with a large table and kitchen. The company pays approximately $1,500 a month for the space and is on a three-month lease. O’Connor is the only one of the job recruitment company’s 20 employees who is based in the Bay Area and because he didn’t want to come into an office five days a week or spend money for days he worked remotely, Codi felt like a good fit.
“If we’re not going to need it, then we may as well not pay for it,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
O’Connor does not know who uses his space the days he’s not there but acknowledged that the other users keep it neat.
“We’re all adults,” he said.
Occupying office space for less days has helped some companies afford more office space, The Wall Street Journal reports. Pet telehealth company Fuzzy initially wanted a 2,000-square foot space but is currently leasing 3,000 square feet twice week for $8,000 a month—about half of what they’d pay for an office under a traditional lease, per company general counsel Dave Toomey.
