Co-working spaces are springing up like mushrooms in Mauritius. The Gound, The Hive, co-Working of Port-Louis or La Turbine to name but a few, offer a new working experience. Open spaces that breathe new life into office work. The ict.io Redac went to meet Shubhda Gujadhur, ambassador of open space work, in charge of the entrepreneurial relationship at La Turbine.
Over the last two years, the concept of co-working has been gaining momentum in Mauritius! There are several reasons why entrepreneurs have chosen to work in an open space, but the main one is the sometimes exorbitant price of renting an individual office! Moreover, in a networked world, undertaking and working alone is neither pleasant nor efficient.
To find out about the advantages of a co-working space, the Ict.io editorial staff went to meet an ambassador of open space work, Shubhda Gujadhur, in charge of entrepreneurial relations at La Turbine. The latter shares with us her experience of life in the co-working space that is La Turbine, the Mauritian incubator of the ENL group.
First of all, understand what co-working is!
There are many things to say about co-working, but none of them will make sense if you don’t understand what the concept is. A quick online search will give the following result:
“(…) the use of an office or other working environment by self-employed persons or persons working for different employers, usually in order to share equipment, ideas and knowledge (…)”.
If this is a first explanation, we must understand that the co-working space has many implications. First of all, think about what you need to work with: a laptop, an outlet for your laptop, a desk, a chair and most importantly a decent internet connection. If you think of the traditional office, for which you pay rent every month, Shubhda asks:
“What if you could go to work, have a flexible rental package, meet interesting, new and different people every day and sit somewhere different whenever you wanted? That’s the first implication of working in a co-working space. Oh, did I mention the free unlimited local roast coffee?”
Develop a culture of community living!
A co-working experience that she has been living on a daily basis for the past few months at La Turbine. According to Shubhda, the second implication of co-working is that there is a particular culture associated with it. A culture that transcends job titles, years of experience and the rigidities of blue-collar jobs: it’s a culture of community. People, “co-workers” as they are called, share ideas, consult each other in their respective fields of expertise and sometimes collaborate with each other.
“At Turbine, this is done by fostering trust, diversity and innovation. Co-working brings diversity and collaborations between diverse groups of people make the best recipes for innovation.”
The other problem facing traditional offices is the need to bring in outside professionals to solve your problems.
“Let’s say your laptop has a bug: you need to call a professional to fix it. In a co-working space, you’re likely to find a developer or computer scientist willing to help. The same goes for professional advice,” she points out, extolling the virtues of choosing to work in a co-working space.
The plus of co-working according to Shubhda:
“you are working to create a community of individuals who might never have met under other circumstances.”
