The New Way To Work.

• Author: Beers, Heather

You don't have to spend 40 hours in an office anymore. Here's how companies are reinventing the way we work.

If you're reading this while at work--take a beat and look up. Are you at the office? Maybe you're surrounded by three walls and a sliding door, or tucked in your cubicle amid a mountainscape of padded partitions, or bobbing in an open-floor-plan-sea of desks? Or perhaps you're grabbing a quick mocha latte from an on-site cafe before heading back to your coworking nook? Or maybe you're WFH (admit it, while wearing those stretched out pair of sweats--err, perhaps that's just me)?

Where we work--and how that impacts our work--are questions that companies are rethinking. From startup newbies to decades-old enterprises, businesses are letting go of the strict "must own/iease space and put all employees in that space eight hours a day, five days a week" model.

Some are harnessing the catalytic culture and vibe of coworking spaces. Others are tapping into tech's connectivity, helping remote employees stay tethered to the company while working from home. Some are developing an office-and-remote hybrid. Many are doing a combination of all of the above. Whatever the mix, forward-thinking companies are all helping shape the answer to: what is the future of our workspaces?

Coworking is not the holy grail we thought it was

Let's start with coworking. If you're new to the concept, think well-appointed office digs with workstations that allow individuals to plop down wherever with their laptops, all the way up to customized multi-office space for larger teams. Coworking spaces typically provide the "extras," like conference rooms, video/phone booths, cafes and coffee bars, along with culture-oriented elements like after-hours soirees, yoga, art classes, and more.

Although people typically associate coworking with freelancers and startups, Fortune 500 and enterprise companies such as Salesforce, Microsoft, UBS, and others also utilize coworking spaces. It makes sense. They're essentially beautiful office space, plus amenities, plus community all included in a turnkey package.

First appearing in 2005, coworking is a relatively new phenomenon in the "how we work" continuum. The lore goes that after a healthy sesh with his life coach, software engineer Brad Neuberg launched San Francisco Coworking Space with the altruistic hope of adding a sense of community to collective workspaces. That same year, The Hub (the forerunner to global coworking leader...