Child friendly coworking space - would you use it?

[80sLoz]

Hello everyone, based on my own experiences and challenges of being a single, full-time working mum, I'm thinking of starting a child-friendly coworking space. I want it to be more than just desks and Wi-Fi - but a space for connection and community for us parents doing the same juggle. It seems there are very few cowork set ups like this in the UK. I've done a short survey but not sure if I'm allowed to share here... general thoughts most welcome though - is it a good idea? Would you use a space like this? What would make it valuable to you? Thanks so much 🙏

If you're doing childcare, you aren't working, at least not effectively.

I would find children incredibly distracting - isn't the thing that sets co-working places apart from cafes the fact that they're supposed to be quiet and peaceful with just other working people and no one else?

I'm not your target audience, but it's bad enough if you're on a Teams call with one noisy child in the background and a distracted parent; let alone a roomful of them! People shouldn't be combining childcare and work, unless it's an unforeseen and unavoidable one-off.

It's a terrible idea. WFH with your own child is already a bad idea, working with multiple young children around is even worse.

Can you elaborate on the setup?

I needed dd not bot be able to see me at all while I was working. I made sure I was working in a space I could access facilities without her notice and brought enough snacks and drinks into my home workspace that I didn’t need to go to the kitchen. It was extremely disruptive to her care provider of if I walked through the room and could stay. I only made appearances of I was staying for a bit like to breastfeed.

I'm very disappointed that you haven't explained what it is??

If you're going to run business, you'll have to be much clearer when trying to sell/advertise it.

Christ, no. Having my own children around while I’m working is bad enough, without other little brats knocking about.

Heath and safety nightmare 😂

Honestly no. With my kids there is no way I can't have my eye on them when they play. Like a PP I prefer working in a quiet space with limited distractions, else I just make mistakes and it takes longer redoing everything.

Love the idea though

I think, to be honest, if they were going to be successful then they would already exist.

It would be hard to make the childcare element cost-effective and high quality, as you wouldn’t have a regular cohort of children attending at any one time.

It would therefore be tricky to predict staffing needs. So you would end up over-staffed at times. Your co-working space would therefore be more expensive than others, in order to subsidise the childcare.

There are also matters like equipment, toilet provision and access to outdoor space.

The new free entitlements kick in at nine months, so many parents will have their children settled in childcare provision anyway.

But what you could do is run a co-working space and keep a room aside for use by a mobile creche, perhaps once a week? But even then the provision would be time-limited (under four hours) or would need to be registered with Ofsted.

This might sound good to someone who hasn’t got childcare but terrible for management or employers. If you’re working you should sort childcare. Not end up looking after even more kids who are free range in your office space.

You'd probably also be limiting your market to people who have children. People who don't have children would run a mile, to a nice, calm, child-free coworking space.

The only thing worse than working whilst looking after my own young children would be working plus other peoples kids to keep en eye on. Can’t imagine that would go down well with any employer.

So the children are pretty much unsupervised? What a recipe for disaster!

Childcare and working clearly do not fit together. This is a ridiculous idea.

As with everyone else, I absolutely don’t want children in my workplace. If you’re talking about a really high quality crèche that’s next door then that might be of interest, but are there really that many self employed parents who need ad hoc childcare and a co working space?

No I wouldn’t, child friendly isn’t compatible with working for me.

I’ve just started a new job where they’re totally family friendly and have told me it’s okay to bring DS to the office if I wanted - not that I would right now he’s 3 and a half and in nursery full time. But it’s nice to know in an emergency situation, I would be able to.

Do you mean to have a room with a crèche and trained childcare staff - ie separate from the work room? That could work. Presumably people pay by the hour to use the facilities.

If you mean the same room with a big playpen in the middle nobody will get any work done.

My employer wouldn’t allow us to look after small children while clocked in. It’s too disruptive and unfair on the child.

How would it work - would you hire a professional child care worker to manage the kids? How will you keep them away from the other parents and stop them spilling things on laptops/tripping over cables? It sounds like a good idea at first, but how would it work practically?

No - speaking from experience of having my own company and small children, which would be your target market, presumably - because most employers would not be happy for their employees to regularly combine work and childcare.

If I wanted to work surrounded by many small but loud strange children I could accomplish that in a soft play centre.

It would also be impossible to have a professional phonecall. How would you explain the background noise of 20 excitable children.

I just can’t get my head around this at all. Assuming you don’t mean a childcare provider with co-located co-working space, I can only imagine the people who might potentially be able to effectively use this are those that maybe run their own business very part-time and don’t have to be on calls or anything. Even then though, most people I know who have done this would prefer to do it at home in the evening when their child is asleep or during nap times.

I think David Lloyd have basically already invented this.

Funny you say that 😂

A neighbour gave me a two week guest pass for DL, which was very kind. I rang to check in advance about what the set up was like with kids. (Because David Lloyd in my old area was basically a creche).

In my new area, they assured me that the room for adults in the café was completely separate to the child area.

Reader, they lied. The adult room was a tiny little room that could seat about six people and there was some kind of child's play facility right next to it. The door was meant to be soundproof. But it wasn't and people were constantly going in and out anyway.

I wish David Lloyd did passes for their spa, but beyond that I would never go again! Not that I have David Lloyd money but if I did, I wouldn't go again.

@80sLoz I hope you'll come back and tell us more. I'm assuming you must've been thinking of a creche and a workspace attached. I know other posters have mentioned that child free people wouldn't use it. But I presume that's obvious and that's not who you would want using it anyway.

No 100% would be far too noisy. Plus I don’t want to be around other people’s children when I work. I don’t even want to be around my own 😂