Brands: WORQ

This M’sian Coworking Space Scoffs At Your Excuse Of “Not Having Time To Work Out”

Malaysian coworking space WORQ launched its 3rd space at KL Gateway in Bangsar South on the 12th of July following the success of its 2 other coworking spaces in Glo Damansara, TTDI, and UOA Business Park, Subang.

The unveiling was officiated by YB Fahmi Fadzil, MP of Lembah Pantai with the attendance of another special guest, Cradle Fund’s acting CEO, Razif Aziz.

The interior design of their new location resembles an industrial-like steampunk concept. WORQ’s CEO, Stephanie Ping explained, “This outlet is the first of its kind in such a design, including a number of steel and mirror features, much different from the other outlets.”

WORQ’s main focus is to reach out, support, and build a hyper-localised business community. Aiming to build a space where businesses and entrepreneurs congregate to connect, share resources, knowledge and collaborate, this is something they’ve put into practice with their 2 older spaces, and again now with their KL Gateway space.

Besides that, they’re also strong believers of work-life balance and have run (and are still running) initiatives to ensure that their members are encouraged to achieve it.

To them, it all boils down to having a good time while keeping fit.

The Limitation of Time Should No Longer Be An Excuse

“People normally feel that it’s difficult to practise work-life balance due to the limitation of time. However, we strongly believe that this can be overcome with better time management and the act of prioritising one’s day,” Stephanie said.

“We at WORQ believe that the right environment allows people to be more productive. This way, they achieve more or complete more work in a lesser amount of time. With that, they then have time to balance work and life.”

However, just because one has a work-life balance, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re immediately healthier. According to WORQ, fitness should be a lifestyle.

“People have difficulty getting into fitness as it’s not part of their lifestyle yet. Once it becomes a routine, it will be something that they will not be able to leave behind,” Stephanie stated.

“Also, we believe the environment one is associated with is a strong reason people either pick up or leave fitness. Thus, we at WORQ try our best to encourage fitness activities in our space itself.”

A Focus On Physical And Mental Health

A few examples of their fitness initiatives are Bachata dance sessions driven by WORQ’s Community Manager in their TTDI space, the organisation of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts, and kickboxing and yoga sessions.

It’s not just physical health that matters; WORQ has partnered up with Action for Happiness Malaysia and will be organising a meditation session in September at WORQ Subang as well as a get-together run with Own Your Story, as part of their mental health initiatives.

Along with activities encouraging existing members to prioritise health, WORQ has also come up with the Biggest Loser Challenge open to non-members and current members. Non-Malaysians can apply, too.

The challenge is to get people into a fitter version of themselves within a month, with the winner receiving a lifetime Hot Desk membership at WORQ KL Gateway.

A Hot Desk membership entitles one to 24/7 access to the workspace, and access to members-only events, shared facilities, printers and scanners, a game room and napping pods.

Interested participants aged 18 and above are welcome to visit the KL Gateway space until the end of September to register for the challenge by providing their identification and current weight.

By the end of October, participants will return for a weigh-in and have their amount of weight loss calculated for the winner to be determined. 

The challenge is localised for WORQ KL Gateway as the gym F45 Training and a jogging track, which is directly accessible through the space, are nearby fitness options.

WORQ has also partnered up with F45 Training and Anytime Fitness to offer corporate discounts of 10% at both gyms to further encourage exercising amongst their members.

From Personal Growth To Business Growth

With personal health taken care of, WORQ also looks at business health. The WORQ Business community is meant to assist businesses, particularly those in the suburbs, by providing relevant connections, resources and knowledge across all of its spaces.

An example of the community’s success stories starts with one of WORQ’s first few members who entered as a 2-man team.

Through WORQ, they managed to connect with other members and provide their web development services to other businesses in the space. They’re now a 6-man team and looking to diversify their business into app development.

WORQ also runs a quarterly networking event as an initiative to connect the internal and external community to meet their goals.

Through one of their NetWORQ parties, an attendee was offered a Business Development Opportunity role and is currently focused on bringing in Digital Marketing Projects for his company.

He also got an opportunity to volunteer for TedXBangsar, which led to something bigger as he was subsequently offered a Marketing Assistant role by the curator.

“During that period, he managed to meet and network with big leaders and famous people due to his involvement,” Stephanie said.

3 Awards In The Past 2 Years

WORQ won Best Coworking Space Award 2017 at the ASEAN Rice Bowl Startup Awards and won Coworker Member’s Choice Awards 2019 for 2 locations, Kuala Lumpur and Shah Alam.

The award that they find the most meaningful, however, is their Outstanding Incubator/Co-working Space 2018 award by Malaysian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (MVCA) “as it is awarded by an established organisation in Malaysia”, Stephanie shared.

“This exhibits that we are recognised by the local bodies and community in our effort to establish a hyper-localised business community. We’re ecstatic to be on the right track and it motivates us to go the distance.”

• You can find out more about WORQ here.

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5 Insider Secrets You Never Knew About WORQ Co-Working Space

• We talked to a few community members at WORQ to share some of their insights on what it’s like being a part of the community in the co-working space. 

WORQ, a flexi-lease office, prides itself on being a sought-out option for businesses due to the strong community they have that can help accelerate your business’s growth.

But what is it really like being in a co-working space that focuses on its community building?

When choosing a space to call your office, there are a few factors people take into consideration. One of it is the environment, or more exact, who and what surrounds you within the walls of the space.

To give you some insight, we talked to a few community members to share their experiences of that space.

1) You could find new ways to improve your business.

Being a co-working space, there’s always new people coming in and out, bringing their creative juices and expertise with them.

So one thing that’s been intentionally done to help bring these bright minds together is what the community calls a Bonfire. It’s a group discussion of about 4 to 5 people who are in the same industry and they simply discuss or update each other on the latest trends happening to see how they can grow their business further.

Kevin and Dennis, the co-founders of a web designing company called Appleseeds, both mentioned that this actually helped transform their business entirely.

“Before coming here, we hadn’t realised how outdated our operations were. After learning from other developers here on how they ran things, it inspired us to change our perspective immediately. We improved our service based on the discussions which has helped a lot,” said Kevin.

2) You’ll get the chance to become a Key Opinion Leader (KOL).

WORQ is known to organise multiple types of events, running from networking sessions or panel discussions, as part of their efforts to grow the local startup ecosystem.

Adrian, a software developer who’s worked for many international companies, was pleasantly surprised himself when he was offered to give a talk about coding once.

“It’s the first time that I’ve been asked to share my expertise this way in a co-working space, which is pretty cool. I didn’t expect it when I joined WORQ 6 months ago, but I think it’s a cool opportunity and I’d love to do it more,” said Adrian.

So not only do you get chances to attend events involving many relevant figures in the entrepreneur scene, you could potentially find an opportunity to see yourself in front of an audience to share your thoughts and insights. If you’ve been working on personal branding, here is a place where you might be able to start establishing yourself as a KOL (key opinion leader).

3) You never really know who you’ll meet.

When you first enter the startup scene, it may seem a little intimidating and you might not know how to meet the right connections or people.

WORQ is home to a lot of prominent experts in their field, such as 500 Startups and Kakitangan.com which comes in real handy when you’re looking for a particular service.

When Kevin and Dennis first moved Appleseeds from their home base to WORQ a year ago, they had no idea they’d meet such a variety of people.

As they were still learning the ropes of running a business, they were very thankful to the community managers who helped link them with the right people that could help.

“When our team started growing, we realised we needed a proper HR platform. WORQ helped to introduce us to Kakitangan.com, who was sitting closeby to our office, so it was easy for us to consult them,” said Kevin.

Dennis also shared a time when they received a huge project from one of their clients which required more than just their web designing expertise.

They were able to reach out to other companies in the space and without needing to look far, were able to run the project well.

“Instead of our client needing to find companies from all over, they were lucky to get 3 companies in the space to work on this one project together which made the process a lot easier,” said Dennis.

4) Building the community is a shared responsibility.

One thing that I got from talking to the community members was how it wasn’t just the community managers who made efforts to involve everyone in their activities.

Aside from the events that may grow your businesses, the members also take personal initiative to create tight-knit bonds.

Every Tuesday, WORQ has a communal lunch session where everyone can gather in the pantry area and mingle with each other over some good food.

They also have “Happy Hour” which is basically a group of people who gather together and head to a bar to hang out after the usual “office hours” and enjoy each other’s company over a few drinks.

Another tradition that happens on Thursday nights are Game Nights where anyone who’s interested can come together and bond over a few games in the entertainment area at WORQ.

The members make these efforts so that the community doesn’t feel confined to just business events. They want to cultivate these friendships within the co-working space.

5) Your personal life could also see an improvement.

Although one of the perks of being at WORQ is business growth opportunities, your business may not be the only thing that sees an improvement.

As they house a variety of businesses and people in general, not everyone is an investor or entrepreneur. There are chances of you meeting someone who could help with other matters outside of work.

Adrian shared that he was casually chatting with someone when he briefly mentioned he was looking for a place to stay. Lo and behold, the person is now his landlord.

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When I asked these members who they think would be a right fit for WORQ, they all responded with the same thing: those who are looking to grow with a community of like-minded people.

If you’re someone who enjoys being involved with a group of inspiring and hard-working individuals, I can see why WORQ would be a good choice for you to check out.

WORQ is also in the midst of setting up their new outlet in Subang and according to the team, they hope to bring the same concept of a hyperlocalised community over which could be something to look out for if you’re on the hunt.

Specially for our readers, WORQ is giving a discount of RM100 off your first time booking for the new outlet. All you have to do is enter the promo code “WORQVULCAN18” when you’re signing up and this deal will be running until the 31st of December 2018.

• To book a space and get RM100 off, you can click here.
• For more information on WORQ’s outlets or any other inquiries, you can check out their official website here.

This article is written in collaboration with WORQ.

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Feature Image Credit: WORQ