China makes a habit of disrupting the established order. Its huge infrastructure investment programmes have turned the country into the world’s largest consumer of raw materials.
And its expanding middle class has fuelled an unprecedented boom in the global retail and leisure industries.
Now, it is about to upend the world of work. Its cities – and those in other parts of Asia – have become a driving force behind the co-working revolution, and could soon be teeming with the sort of flexible office spaces pioneered and developed in the US by the likes of WeWork.
The new breed of office offers workers not just desk space and Internet access but a whole suite of new services such as bookable conference rooms with ergonomic chairs, venture capital resources, front-desk services and educational events – all housed within some of the most sustainably constructed buildings in the world.
Asia is already the world's fastest growing market for flexible office spaces.
In Beijing alone, flexible workplaces will represent 30 per cent of the total office market by 2030 compared with just 2.3 per cent today, according to property services firm Colliers International.
At the centre of Asia office working revolution is Shanghai-based naked Hub. The company has drawn extensively on the experience of its chief executive Jonathan Seliger, who has worked at luxury retailers such as Camus, a French cognac house, Switzerland’s Richemont and Coach of the US.
“WeWork was definitely seen as a model – we had been incredibly impressed by their operations and the vibe in New York. We wanted to bring some of that to China, but on a more localised, more authentic basis,” says Seliger, a Philadelphia native.
Originally founded in 2015 by Chinese luxury resort company naked Group, naked Hub was bought by WeWork in 2018.
Naked Hub, which operates in 46 locations across China and other Asian cities, also offers services that are designed to build a community, both online and offline.
For example, through its app, members can request help – such as with registering a company or finding a co-founder with a marketing background – which can lead to doing businesses with other members.
“With thousands of members in many disciplines, someone will respond… Our technology means that 60 per cent of all business needs posted by members of the community are solved by other members,” Seliger says.
“We really believe in creating, enabling and fostering authentic communities in every city where we operate. But we give community teams a lot of leeway to determine the needs of local members – unlike competitors, which operate a uniform community model… We engage with and retain our members through the online technology and the offline community.”
Co-working has certainly taken China by storm.
The number of co-working spaces in Shanghai and Beijing shot up by 50 per cent in 2017 over the previous year, according to real estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle.
The central government’s support for new industries and innovative businesses is likely to fuel future growth.
Many providers also incorporate sustainability to appeal to a new generation of office workers. WeWork, for example, aims to be fully carbon neutral by 2023; it also no longer serves meat at its events, nor reimburses employees for meals that include poultry, pork or red meat.
For its part, naked Hub's ambition is for each of its new buildings to meet the environmental standards set out in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, a globally recognised sustainable building certification.
A report by Colliers shows that compared with a traditional office, flexible workspaces can cut real estate costs by an average of 25 percent and provide a more dynamic environment to improve staff retention, as well as to broaden access to skilled staff and potential business partners.
“Developers and landlords around the world are realising that they need to have shared facilities in their portfolios. And sharing is affordable: it’s less expensive and it’s also better,” Seliger says.
“This is a seismic disruption in one of the oldest and largest industries on the planet, which has something like USD10–15 trillion of transaction value a year in corporate real estate. If even only 3 per cent changed over to flexible, that would be a massive opportunity.”
