In the coworking spaces I owned, a couple of members went out of their way to welcome new people, and we called one of them “the mayor.” Whenever someone new joined, he took them under his wing, introduced them around, and took them to lunch. Our community manager didn’t focus on those introductions, so it was amazing to have a member who did it on his own.
We might assume that community happens naturally once enough people share a space and have room to bump into each other, but it doesn’t. If it seems to be happening on its own in your space, I suspect there’s a member like “the mayor” behind it. If nobody makes those introductions, new members might eventually get to know people, but that can take a long time, and you want them to have a great experience from the start.
I teach operators and community managers to build a Coworking Success Path for new members. A Coworking Success Path is a deliberate plan that shows a new member the steps that lead to a good outcome. You keep track of whether they take those steps, and you celebrate or acknowledge it when they do.
I know the term “success path” from Stu McLaren, who teaches people how to run membership businesses. Building a Coworking Success Path for your space takes four steps:
- Decide what success looks like for a new member.
- List the milestones, meaning the small things you want a new member to do in their first weeks, such as meeting another member in the first day or two.
- Add each milestone to your onboarding meeting, your automated emails and your team’s checklists, and train your staff on the milestones.
- Track how many new members reach each milestone, and review the numbers with your team.
New members who don’t connect early may stop coming in, and flex members may cancel
Jim Heid owns a coworking space in Healdsburg, California, and he talked with me about member onboarding on the podcast. He compared being a new member at a coworking space to being the new kid in high school. Everybody already knows each other, you don’t know anyone yet, and maybe nobody is making an effort to include you.
Many people join coworking spaces as individuals, so they arrive with no friends at work. Gallup found that two in 10 U.S. employees strongly agree they have a best friend at work. It also found that women who strongly agree are more than twice as likely to be engaged at work as women who don’t, 63% compared with 29%. For most people, connecting with other people is the only way to stop feeling lonely, and being around others isn’t enough. Those connections can be minor, but they have to happen.
Many office members sign agreements for a year. Flex members are more likely to be on month-to-month agreements, and they tend to leave sooner. A new flex member who doesn’t have a great early experience might come in less often, lose the habit of leaving the house to come to the space, feel they aren’t using it enough, and cancel. A Coworking Success Path helps a new member meet people and have good experiences in their first weeks.
Step one: decide what success looks like for a new member
Not every new member wants to get integrated into the community. The Coworking Success Path for meeting people is for the members who joined to do that, whether because it’s good for their business, good for them personally, or because they’re lonely. I think a good outcome for a new member is getting to know other members and using the space’s amenities. When those experiences are positive, members come in more often than they would without them.
Over time, coming to the space and seeing their work friends becomes an important part of how they work. So does using whatever amenities the space has, such as a meeting room, podcast room or photo studio. Those members get more out of the space and stay longer. A member who stays longer pays you for more months, so each one is worth more to your business.
Step two: list the small things you want a new member to do in their first weeks, like meeting another member or booking a meeting room
Once you know what success looks like, list the specific actions that lead to it, such as:
- Meeting another member within the first day or two.
- Going to lunch with another member.
- Attending a member event or a networking event and having a good time.
- Learning how to book a meeting room and booking one.
- Using another amenity, such as a podcast room, photo studio or wellness room.
- Buying something at the coffee bar, or getting a latte made if your space offers free ones.
- Having a positive conversation with the community manager.
Each of these is small, and together they can help a member feel more integrated into the space. Write the list down rather than assuming the milestones will happen on their own, and decide how your team will make each one happen.
Step three: add each new-member milestone to your onboarding meeting, emails, and team checklists
In the onboarding meeting, if a new member tells you they joined to meet people, describe the steps they can take to do that. Tell them about members who joined for the same reason and what those members did to get to know people and feel part of the community. You can show them as a visual, hand the member a list or talk through them together, then send a follow-up email that covers the same steps.
Then make the milestones part of the systems your team uses for every new member:
- Make sure every new member gets instructions for joining your Slack or Facebook group.
- Have the community manager personally invite each new member to the next member welcome event or networking event.
- Have the community manager check whether each new member has booked a meeting room. If two weeks pass without a booking, the community manager can show the member the amenities and ask, “Can I help you book one of these for something you have coming up?”
- Make sure new members know how to use any free coffee, their guest passes and the other perks included in their membership.
- Set up automated reminders for members, such as a reminder to book a meeting room.
- Set up reminders for your team too, such as checking in with each new member one week after they join, much earlier than a 60-day check-in.
- Train your staff on the Coworking Success Path and add it to your standard operating procedures.
Step four: track what percentage of new members reach each milestone
Once the milestones are written down, you can track them as key performance indicators, or KPIs, and go over the numbers with your team regularly, starting with questions like these:
- What percentage of new members reach every milestone on the Coworking Success Path?
- What percentage meet another member within their first day or two?
- What percentage book a meeting room or another amenity within their first couple of weeks?
If those numbers are low, work out what you can change so that more new members reach each milestone.
Helping new members connect with each other takes thought and tracking, and the tracking can take a lot of staff time. Decide what’s most important to track and how much time to spend on it, without overdoing it.
Ask members to help welcome new people
New coworking members don’t know what a successful membership looks like, so someone needs to show them the steps and guide them through each one. Your team can do that, and so can members who are willing to help. If you have a “mayor” of your own, members who welcome new people as ambassadors, or anyone else who wants to help, don’t say no to that help. Sometimes you have to ask, because you never know who wants to be part of your welcome wagon.
This article is the written companion to this episode of the Everything Coworking podcast. For my complete walkthrough of building a Coworking Success Path for new members, listen to the full episode.
