What Is A Community Coworking Manager And Why Hire One

If you’re overwhelmed by the responsibilities of your coworking space and need help, now might be the time to hire a community manager.

In this article, we’ll cover what a community coworking manager is, how to hire one, and how to streamline the management process so that you can enhance your members’ experience and grow your business faster.

Quick Answer: A community coworking manager creates and maintains a productive community within a coworking space. They’re responsible for community engagement, operations, and space management. Management systems can enhance the customer experience and streamline mundane tasks, allowing community coworking managers to focus on higher-value activities.

What Is a Community Coworking Manager?

A coworking space manager or community manager is a professional responsible for creating and maintaining a vibrant, engaged, and productive community within your coworking space. You can see them in incubator spaces too. They’re your community members’ first point of contact.

These individuals’ roles go beyond administrative duties to focus on creating a welcoming atmosphere, supporting members, and fixing various issues within the coworking space.

4 Key Responsibilities of Coworking Managers

Community managers’ duties aren’t just administrative — they also include enhancing members’ overall experience and helping your community grow.

Let’s take a look at four of these professionals’ key responsibilities:

1. Community Management

Coworking managers must get to know your coworking space members, understand their needs, and support them wherever necessary. This includes:

• Meeting them when they arrive
• Addressing problems that arise
• Resolving disputes and conflicts
• Gathering feedback to improve services

It also includes providing personalized onboarding to build loyalty among members and organizing and hosting networking events to retain members and give them a chance to connect with others.

2. Sales and Business Development

Your coworking space manager must promote your space to potential customers through different marketing channels.

They may also be responsible for developing and implementing local and digital marketing strategies to attract new members, such as hosting free coworking days, building relationships with local businesses, using social media, and running digital advertising campaigns to attract a specific demographic.

3. Operations Management

Community space managers oversee the space’s day-to-day operations to ensure everything runs smoothly and members have everything they need.

Depending on the nature of your space, they may also perform receptionist duties, such as handling calls, scheduling tours, and organizing company mail and packages.

4. Space Management

Community managers must analyze floor plans and usage patterns to identify growth opportunities in the coworking space. They also introduce new amenities and help members use them effectively.

If you don’t use a booking system in your space, your coworking community manager may also be responsible for handling bookings and cancellations. However, remember that this takes away their time to focus on more high-level tasks that could help your space grow.

Benefits of Hiring a Community Coworking Manager

Building a healthy environment for your coworking space is crucial to its success. A community manager can be of great help here for you and your members.

Here are some of the main benefits of hiring a community manager to oversee your coworking space:

Stronger Community Engagement

A community manager helps foster connections by allowing your members to network and collaborate. This enables them to work together and get to know each other, ultimately creating a strong sense of community and belonging.

Better Member Experience

A community manager can help you provide exceptional customer service, including making members feel more welcome and onboarding them properly. This can lead to more referrals since 82% of customers worldwide recommend companies based on their experience.

Efficient Operations Management

Since coworking managers oversee the day-to-day operations of a coworking space, they can ensure everything goes smoothly and handle any issues as soon as they arise. That way, minor issues don’t become big problems that are difficult to resolve later.

Increased Member Retention Rate

Your manager’s touch and attentive service can help coworking space members feel valued and increase their loyalty to your facility. By actively gaining member feedback, they can incorporate recommendations and continuously improve the space to encourage members to stay longer.

By the way, you may want to check out some other important coworking KPIs you need to track.

Essential Skills to Look for in a Community Manager

While your coworking manager must have excellent operations management skills, you’ll want to consider additional abilities when looking to hire someone for this position:

• Problem-solving skills: Good community managers can think on their feet and find quick and creative solutions to different problems, including issues related to the facility, operational challenges, and membership conflicts.
• Tech savviness: To operate a coworking space effectively, your manager needs to have strong technical skills and know how to use management software. They must also be able to analyze data and feedback to continue improving the space.
• Adaptability: Circumstances may change. For example, your space may suddenly experience a higher demand for private meeting rooms due to several startups joining at once. Your community manager needs to be able to adapt to these changes to ensure your space remains relevant.
• Relational expertise: Your manager needs good people skills to help your members feel acknowledged and valued. This includes communicating with them, listening to their suggestions and feedback, and addressing their concerns.
• Leadership and initiative: Your manager needs to be proactive in identifying opportunities and able to motivate and inspire members to create a dynamic, collaborative environment.

How to Hire and Onboard a Community Manager for Your Coworking Space

There are several steps you can take to ensure you hire the best manager for your coworking space:

1. Determine the Job Requirements and Compensation

Do a job analysis to determine the standard practice for coworking space manager positions. You can analyze similar jobs, salaries, and responsibilities and decide on your requirements.

Think of questions like:

• What do you need the manager to do?
• What skills do they need?
• What is a fair and competitive salary?

In the US, community managers earn around $47 to $65 per hour. However, this can dramatically vary, depending on their experience.

2. Write a Job Description

The job description should be no more than 600 words and have a clear structure. Include the following sections:

• About the job: Explain the company’s role at a high level.
• Key responsibilities: List the primary duties, including day-to-day and quarterly tasks, such as operations, space management, and quarterly analyses.
• Skills: Mention the critical soft and hard skills the candidate needs to have. Remember to include tech-savviness as a skill, as your manager will need this if you want to incorporate management systems into your business.
• Education and experience: Include any educational requirements, such as a specific certificate or degree, and the experience you want the manager to have. For example, you may want them to have marketing experience to effectively promote your space.
• Compensation: Provide a salary range and details about any other benefits the manager will get, such as health insurance or a 401k.

3. Advertise the Position

Once you have a job description, it’s important to advertise it to reach the right people.

Some advertising strategies, such as job boards, are better than others because they bring in higher-quality candidates with more experience.

Places to advertise the position include LinkedIn, Indeed, Google for Jobs, Facebook, Twitter, your company’s careers page, or niche-specific job boards.

4. Evaluate Applications

Write down all the skills your coworking manager must have (the non-negotiables). These may include sales experience, a background in customer service, or the ability to use different management software.

You can determine the skills you’re looking for by deciding how you plan to operate your coworking space and what the community manager will be responsible for.

Suppose you plan on implementing tools into your coworking space to automate operations and space management (highly recommended). In that case, you’ll also need to consider applicants with management software experience.

5. Interview Candidates

After you’ve reviewed the candidate applications and identified the best ones, you can start the interview process.

Remember that you might get candidates who are great managers but have no experience managing coworking spaces specifically. So, you need to tailor your interview questions to scenarios applicable to coworking spaces.

For example, ask candidates the following questions:

• There’s a member in the space who frequently disrupts other members. How would you handle this situation?
• You realize that more startups have joined the space in the last three months, causing an increase in the need to book and use meeting rooms. What would you do?
• Attendance at community events has declined. How would you plan and promote events to excite members and increase participation?

6. Onboard and Train Your Coworking Manager

Once you’ve hired the ideal candidate, you’ll need to onboard them. Here’s what to do at this stage:

• Provide a detailed company overview and introduce them to your coworking space, staff members, and policies.
• Tell them about your tools, systems, and processes. Note that this can be complicated if you use multiple tools. It’s ideal to use an all-in-one solution like OfficeRnD Flex.
• Outline their daily, monthly, and quarterly tasks and responsibilities so that they know what’s expected of them.

How to Help Your Community Manager Achieve Maximum Success for Your Space (With ONE Tool)

While having a community manager oversee your space’s daily operations is essential, providing them with the right tools to automate processes and enhance the overall member experience is also important.

OfficeRnD Flex is a comprehensive coworking management software that provides tools to support community managers. Specifically, it does the following:

• Simplifies the booking process for desks, meeting rooms, and other facilities
• Automates billing processes and payments for full-time members and day pass users
• Tracks membership plans, renewals, and expirations
• Provides white-labeled member apps that allow you to create digital workplace experience members will love
• Integrates with all major tools and systems such as Zapier, Xero, Kisi, Hubspot, PaperCut, and many others.
• Provides a platform where members can stay informed on community news and events
• Offers insights into how your coworking space is being used so your manager can optimize its performance and boost profitability
• Helps plan and promote events

Providing your coworking space manager with a tool like OfficeRnD Flex will help them automate several repetitive (yet important) tasks so that they can focus on other high-value activities.

Use OfficeRnD Flex to Manage Your Coworking Space

You now know what a community coworking manager is and how hiring and providing them with the right tools will set your company up for massive growth and success.

With OfficeRnD Flex, you can finally say goodbye to cumbersome management solutions and use a customizeable and highly embeddable tool that keeps members happy and automates the rest.

Click here to book a demo and learn how it can streamline your processes and help you scale your operations.

FAQ

What Is the Role of a Community Manager?

A community manager acts as the bridge between a coworking space company and its customers. They are the company’s face, voice, and tone, and they build online and offline relationships with members.

What Are the Qualifications of a Community Manager?

The qualifications of a community manager can differ based on the specific role. However, generally, they must have a bachelor’s degree in project management, operations management, or marketing. They may also need one to two years of experience in community management, event planning, or marketing.

What Makes a Successful Community Manager?

Qualities that make a successful community manager include strong organizational skills to ensure day-to-day operations run smoothly, adaptability to new trends and member expectations, and problem-solving skills to resolve issues as soon as they pop up.

What is the Highest Salary for a Community Manager?

The highest salary for a Community Manager can vary significantly depending on location and years of experience. In high-cost areas like San Francisco, salaries can reach up to approximately $97,091, while in other major cities like New York and Dallas-Fort Worth, top salaries are around $80,791 and $79,500 respectively. With over seven years of experience, a Community Manager’s salary can rise to about $94,872. Generally, the upper salary range for Community Managers across various locations and experiences lies between $70,000 and $80,000, with potential to go higher based on specific circumstances and additional skills

Is Community Manager a Stressful Job?

Being a community manager can indeed be a stressful job. The role often requires managing multiple communication channels, addressing diverse customer concerns, and maintaining a positive brand image, all of which can be demanding. Community managers must also handle crises or negative feedback publicly, which adds to the pressure. The stress levels can vary based on the company’s size, the community’s activity level, and the support available from the rest of the team. Balancing these responsibilities effectively while keeping the community engaged and satisfied requires strong communication skills and emotional resilience.