GoalMakers

Co-Working Spaces: How to Offer Custom Learning to Your Members

If you've been looking for a new income source that can help your co-working space thrive despite the ongoing pandemic, then you might be considering adding learning opportunities in your services and membership benefits. There are many reasons as to why we encourage you to push through with this strategy, but the bottom line is that providing learning programs to your members enables you to add value to your memberships. This is important as your co-working space relies on face-to-face interactions and physical environments. However, the pandemic has made this challenging and, as such, your goal now should be to find a place where your co-working space can fit and serve a purpose. Providing custom, branded learning is one such role that you can fill.

As a co-working space, you're in a unique position that enables you to connect with a wide range of clients, which can include people and experts from startups and large enterprises. You can take advantage of these connections by venturing into providing custom, branded learning that seeks to help your members improve themselves on various levels, topics, and industries.

Our course is an example of custom, branded learning, and this article is based on our experience with it. We hope that it helps you determine how you can start offering this product to your members.
The first step to creating a custom learning program that adds value to your memberships is to partner with industry experts and mentors who know what they're talking about. You can look for these experts within your circle or, alternatively, you can make the effort of contacting mentors from institutions and organizations that prioritize learning.

Make your pitch and be sure to emphasize that your co-working space provides both the physical and virtual environment that can help individuals all over the world gain knowledge and develop skills that can benefit their respective companies.

You might also want to check out companies that already offer their own learning programs and determine whether or not you can help them distribute their material.
Immersion and research are the keywords for the second step. In this part of the development, you may want to get to know who your members are, what industry they work in, and what they need to learn the most.

This is essential because each company may be looking to develop specific skills. If you want to cater to a larger audience, going back to the basics, such as managerial and financial skill, should be the content of your learning program.
In that case, check out our course, which seeks to educate interested parties on the foundations of running a business.
As for distribution, you have a few options. You can make the learning material available to your members through a program that maximizes the time they spend in your co-working space.

You can also invest in offering a virtual space that emulates an environment that is conducive to learning and distribute it there.

A third option would be to do distance learning wherein you give access to those interested and let them complete the learning material in their own time.

Whichever option you choose, keep in mind that not everyone may be able to go to your co-working space location or invest the time to attend regular classes.
To further add value to your memberships, you might want to start offering relevant opportunities that are in line with your efforts to help your clients learn and improve. For instance, you can offer online events and conferences that enable your members to get in contact with the industry expert you partnered with.

You can also hold online group learning classes, which can help build a sense of community that can keep their motivation up. In terms of the learning material, you might want to determine if your mentors and industry experts can dedicate time for one-on-one interactions with the students. These opportunities can help your members connect with the right people and gain relationships that can benefit them even after they've completed the learning material.
As with any new project or goal, you need to evaluate your success so that you can determine whether or not you've met your objectives. In the context of learning through your co-working space, there are several things you can evaluate.

First, you can determine what your members thought of the material, if it helped them become more essential to their companies, and if they would want further learning programs and opportunities.

Second, you might want to check the performance of your co-working space to see if offering custom, branded learning was a worthy investment.

Finally, look at the big picture and recognize that your efforts can help you transition successfully to the post-pandemic world.

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