They have a room with a door, a lease that’s probably longer than anyone else’s, and a tendency to disappear behind that door for hours at a time.
Office members can be a coworking operator’s biggest community-building challenge — and, as four seasoned operators recently shared, one of their biggest opportunities.
On a recent episode of Coworking Convos hosted by Cat Johnson, Anne Kirby of The Candy Factory, Jamie Dundas of GoodSpace, Drew Puig of Bond Collective, and Sarah Travers of Workbar shared what actually works when it comes to pulling private office users out of isolation and into the fabric of a coworking community.
For her, the shift starts before someone even signs a contract. Office users aren’t tenants or renters. They’re members, just like everyone else.
“An office member just gets an office. They are treated like every other member when it comes to amenities, perks, and so on, except for the fact that they have a room with a door,” Kirby said. “Language helps create culture. And the vocabulary that we use is really important because it sets the tone pretty much out the gate.”
That tone gets reinforced at every touchpoint.
The Candy Factory’s website and social channels lean into phrases like “your friendly coworking hub” and “find your people.” It’s intentional.
The goal is to attract people who actually want to participate, and to filter out those looking for a more traditional, buttoned-up office experience.
“We know we’re not the best fit for everyone,” Kirby said. “But we have a waiting list for both of our facilities when it comes to our offices, because people who are here want to be part of the culture that we’ve created.”
“As soon as they start using the term tenants, which is obviously more traditionally the language that we use for the lease relationship with the landlord, we realized the problem,” Dundas said. “They’re talking about renting space. They’re talking about square footage. And of course, you think it’s a bit too expensive, because you’re not getting the value in what we’re really contributing.”
The takeaway from both operators is the same: the words people use to describe their relationship with your space tell you everything about whether they see themselves as part of a community or just paying for four walls.
At The Candy Factory, onboarding isn’t just paperwork and a Wi-Fi password. Kirby’s team digs in. What are your hobbies? What snacks do you love? What are you hoping to get out of this membership?
That information becomes fuel for ongoing engagement. Every Tuesday at 3:00 p.m., The Candy Factory hosts what they call Barista Hour, where members make drinks for other members. And because they asked the question, the team knows which office members love which snacks and are not above using that intel.
“I will literally say, ‘Hey, we just got Aussie bites.’ And I tag Justin in it, and he was just like, ‘Oh, I’ll be right over,’” Kirby said. “You’re getting them to come on out of their office because you know what they like. Because you get to know them really well.”
That level of personal knowledge gets tracked. Every member at The Candy Factory is assigned a staff buddy, and the team monitors engagement. Not to punish people who don’t show up, but to understand who needs a nudge and what kind of nudge might actually land.
Dundas thinks a lot about barriers to entry. His philosophy: if you want office members to participate, make participation almost effortless.
“Rather than a big ticketed event, it’s more about building in the community rituals,” Dundas said. “We try to get into the shoes of our private office members. What they want throughout the day is a break from the rest of their team or from the confines of their office.”
So GoodSpace designs micro-moments.
A 15-minute chocolate tasting.
A quick coffee hour.
Something so small and low-pressure that saying no feels like more effort than saying yes. And crucially, the invitation comes in person with a literal knock on the door.
“Before we’re doing anything, one of us will have a whip around and knock on the door and give them a warning. ‘Hey guys, this is happening in 15 minutes, knock along,’” Dundas said. “So simple. But honestly, so effective. When they see that face to face, it makes a big difference, as opposed to just getting an email.”
“You can have the nicest tile in the world. You can have the nicest sofa in the world. But that doesn’t build a community,” Puig said. “What builds a community is your staff and the people around you who build you up and make it actually worth it.”
Puig sees this play out constantly. Beautiful food-and-beverage spreads, gorgeous charcuterie boards — none of it matters if the team isn’t present and engaged during the event itself. The prep is necessary, but the magic happens when staff actually participate rather than just set up and walk away.
And Puig walks the talk.
He’s a figure skating fan, and when the Olympics were on, he hosted a figure skating happy hour. It landed like a perfect double axel. Not because the event was polished, but because it was personal.
“That translated well with the community, because it’s something someone can relate to,” Puig said. “It’s something that someone can latch on to. ‘Oh, he really likes that. And I want to support my friend.’ Even on a personal level versus a professional level.”
“There’s so many other people out there doing the same exact things. People have breakfast. People have happy hours. So I think hiring the right people is extremely important,” Puig said. “You can have a person that’s in it for a job, or you can have a person that’s in it for a career and a passion for the industry. And I think finding that balance is huge for the success of your space.”
On the design side, Travers starts with a number: 150. That’s Dunbar’s number — the theoretical limit of meaningful social connections a person can maintain. Workbar’s spaces are sized accordingly. If you go beyond 150 people in a given space, Travers believes it becomes nearly impossible to form real connections.
Within that cap, Workbar uses what Travers calls “neighborhoods:” distinct zones designed around how people actually want to work. There’s a cafe neighborhood for people open to conversation. A study neighborhood for heads-down focus. A switchboard neighborhood for phone calls and Zoom meetings.
Where you sit signals how you want to work, and those signals are written on the walls.
“Those cues remove a lot of the friction that naturally happens when people share space,” Travers said. “Friction can kill a community very quickly.”
The neighborhoods didn’t come from a consultant. They came from watching people. Fifteen years ago, when Workbar was just open coworking filled with founders and startups, people naturally migrated to different areas based on noise level. Over time, the team formalized what was already happening organically.
The result is a paradox that Travers hears regularly from new members: they feel more privacy in Workbar’s open coworking environment than they did in a glass-walled private office at a traditional flex space.
Community managers at Workbar are freed from back-office tasks so they can actually be present with members. They’re not sitting behind a computer processing invoices. They’re out in the community, enforcing norms, making introductions, and removing friction before it compounds.
Workbar also makes its members visible through a member board: a physical display connected to the tech platform that shows who’s in the space that day. Travers describes it as “the watercooler meets LinkedIn.”
The most unexpected thread of the conversation came from Travers, who talked about what it means to show up authentically as a leader in your own space.
Travers describes herself as a “carpool CEO” — running a company while doing school drop-offs, advocating for her daughter who has a significant learning disability, and building new Workbar locations in the neighborhoods where she actually lives and works. She doesn’t separate her personal life from her professional one. She sits in the open coworking space with members. She books a meeting room when she needs one, just like everyone else.
“It’s not so much about sharing more,” Travers said. “It’s more about hiding less.”
That philosophy extends to members, too. Workbar’s origin story is right there in the name: work plus bar. Professional life and social life, all in one place. When members feel safe enough to bring their whole selves to the space, engagement follows naturally.
“We don’t want our members editing themselves, because then they lose engagement,” Travers said.
Every operator on this panel came at the question from a different angle: language, ritual, design, authenticity, hiring.
But they all landed in the same place.
Turning office renters into community members isn’t about programming or perks. It’s about treating every person in your space as a member first, removing the friction that keeps people isolated, and creating an environment where participation is easy, natural, and genuinely rewarding.
Or as Kirby put it: “The more you put in, the more you get out.”
Coworks is a partner of Coworking Convos and the Content Creators Lab, and we have the privilege of sharing these dispatches afterward — spotlighting the juicy tidbits and powerful takeaways shared in the hour-long conversation.
But by no means does this replace the real value of being there! Check out the next Convo and be in the room when it happens.