• Nosy people
• Crying babies
• Chatty Kathys
• Non-existent power outlets
• Crappy security
• The worst wi-fi connection ever
• Being inconvenienced while telecommuting in general?

Regus flexible workspace gives you a professional and secure, yet relaxed workspace that's all about collaboration and accessibility. For less than the price of a cup of coffee a day, our monthly membership gives you the space to work productively. So there is less of that and more this…

Our space lets you take those private phone calls, have professional meetings or tweet about your meals to your heart's desire. Change up your routine and get a day pass, because we're making Midtown cool again.

It's time to #WorkWellNYC

This morning's commute took people hours.   It could be days before the rails are fixed and commutes are back to normal, so here's your chance to skip the commute and avoid the distractions of working from home.

Our business lounges provide a productive and professional environment to stay productive and save you hours trying to get to and from work.

Visit www.regus.com to find your nearest center.  Simply present your ticket to Metro-North and you will receive free access to our lounges.

Three-term mayor of New York and tech-billionaire Michael Bloomberg (pictured) started his own company when he was fired after 15 years at Salomon Brothers. Spotting a gap in the market for up-to-the-minute business information, he set up Bloomberg LP.

Unemployment was also the catalyst for automotive mogul Soichiro Honda. Rejected by the Toyota Motor Corporation for an engineering job, he started making scooters at home. With encouragement from neighbours, he went on to turn his hobby into a business that became a billion-dollar enterprise.

More than half of survey respondents admitted that the current economic conditions could be a deterrent to starting up. Red tape, a lack of credit and poor government support were the biggest problems. But 85% said they would still start their business again today. Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur… 

Download the full report 

(Photo credit Rubinstein on Flickr)

1) The Office

2) The Mary Tyler Moore Show (TV News Room)

3) The Dick Van Dyke Show (Comedy Writers Room)

4) Barney Miller (Squad Room)

5) LA Law (Law Firm)

6) The West Wing (The Oval Office)

7) Newsroom

Mad Men

9) Seinfeld – Elaine’s J. Peterman Office;  George’s office at the Yankees

10) CSI (Grisom's Office)

Consider Uganda, where multi-party politics have been established since 2005. Rich in natural resources, the country depends on agriculture – and coffee in particular – but manufacturing, tourism, mining, ICT and construction are all growing strongly, and the first oil reserves have been discovered. Now Britain and China are competing for the title of the country’s biggest investor, with Russia and India close behind.

Its neighbour, Rwanda, is bidding to become the Singapore of Africa with well-functioning institutions, low corruption and strong security – in remarkable contrast with its troubled recent past. The economy still has plenty of growing to do, but is keeping up with the average African growth rate.

Regus Kigali City Tower, Rwanda

An entrepreneurial spirit is flourishing. The 22-year-old Ugandan student Abdu Ssekalala developed nine mobile apps after taking a Nokia training course – and became a dollar billionaire almost overnight. Others are developing promising businesses from paper-bag manufacture, rabbit farming, biogas waste recycling schemes, hydroponic horticulture, website development and financial education. The potential of sectors like construction, agriculture, communications, healthcare and IT is simply huge.  

These conditions naturally create demand for flexible workspaces, which is why Regus has opened business centres in the Ugandan and Rwandan capitals, Kampala and Kigali. We already have offices in nearby Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia. Last year we opened a business centre in Abidjan, on the Ivory Coast. 

When so much of the world seems preoccupied with ageing populations, economic recession and environmental threats, Africa feels like a place where anything is possible. And there are plenty of statistics and forecasts to support this view. One hundred and twenty million Africans now have a disposable income of between $4 and $120 per day – putting them in the middle-class bracket for developing nations. 

Of course political instability is a risk in some countries, and there are gaps in the infrastructure – transport links and energy supplies above all. But their very lack provides clear opportunities. Samsung, Hyundai and 15 other Chinese or European companies are currently competing for the US$280.7mn (KSh24 billion) Nairobi commuter rail project. International competition for such projects will only increase over the coming years.

Besides, you don’t have to buy property or commit resources any further than necessary. Hence the growing interest in virtual offices, drop-in business centres and other flexible forms of business support. 

The Global Competitiveness index recently published by the World Economic Forum concluded that the latest figures for Africa provided “cause for cautious optimism”. With the graphs pointing so clearly upwards, I am much more optimistic than cautious about Africa’s prospects.

Twenty-five years later, technology has enabled truly mobile ways of working. Here we take a look at five game-changing inventions that enabled the shift from local workplace to global workspace:

• 1991 – Email: With the launch of world wide web in 1991, email started to change the face and pace of business. It was the first internet application widely adopted by business and remains the most important,.The overflowing desk – covered in memos, letters and faxes – became replaced with the email inbox, and a revolution in productivity began. 
   
• 1995 – The Laptop: Early portable computers were more ‘luggables’ than laptops.  By the mid-1990s, however, the sight of people hunched over their Dell Latitudes on the train, on planes, and in hotel lobbies soon became commonplace.  The office ceased to be the only location to work, and became merely one option.
   
• 1999 – The BlackBerry: Mobiles phones became business must-haves when the first BlackBerry and email on-the-go arrived in 1999. Busy executives no longer needed an Ethernet cable and a computer to carry out essential management tasks – the office was everywhere, all the time. 
   
• 2001 – Wi-Fi hotspots: With the arrival of Wi-Fi in offices, homes and public spaces, workers stopped being tied to cables – informal breakout areas and business lounges replaced rows of fixed desks in modern companies. In 2001, Starbucks introduced WiFi and millions of freelancers moved their businesses into coffee shops. 
   
• 2013 – Cloud-based services: The cloud revolution is still in its infancy, but its implications are huge. When you take away the filing cabinets and servers, the meaning of the office changes. It is no longer a corporate hub – just a place where you choose to work. In 1989 most tasks could only be accomplished in head office. In 2013, any one of the 1500 Regus centres or the growing network of Regus Express locations has everything you might need to work effectively

What about you? Which technological innovations have affected your work the most?

In a globalised world, one of the most effective growth strategies is to open up new markets. Exporting firms are enjoying greater revenue and profit growth than their domestically-focused counterparts for the second consecutive year, according to global research by Regus. 

Entering new markets may be a proven route to growth, but it does present challenges  - from local regulation to risk management. And there are challenges for individuals too. Tell a busy global executive that you’re adding another country to the list of markets he or she needs to visit regularly, and the news may not be welcomed. Business travel stress levels increase with age, travel frequency and seniority,  and the main stress factors complained of are lost or delayed luggage; poor or no internet connections; having to fly economy on medium or long haul; and delays. 

Your finance people may also groan at the news, especially since airline prices in APAC are expected to increase by about 2.5% in 2013, even with low-cost carriers entering the market. Average hotel rates in APAC are predicted to rise by 3.5% – and up to 8% in Singapore – and car rental rates by almost 6%. 

Is all your travel necessary?

Given the stresses and the costs, do businesses really need to increase business travel in order to enjoy growth abroad?

Whilst some business travel is inevitable, much of it is no longer necessary, given connecting technologies such as video-conferencing. VC is a powerful tool for reducing business travel costs, and it can also help companies to improve the way they communicate. 

Say your relationships with customers or contacts abroad were previously managed via business trips, backed by occasional phone calls. If you replace some of the travel and the conference calls with VC, you cut the travel costs, but still connect better than you were doing by phone. Less cost and more effective communications? That really is win-win.

And, by the way, video-conferencing can deliver other wins – for example, making it possible to cut office costs by promoting remote working. It can also increase the talent pool available to companies: in a study by Regus, 79% of respondents said that having the option to choose video-conferencing over travel some of the time would encourage mothers to return to the workplace.

Look for local expertise

The other way to reduce business travel is to entrust more to local management. The days of relying on expat managers to manage operations abroad are fast fading as businesses try to cut back on expensive expat packages. Companies are also more aware of the problems associated with expat managers – most commonly (according to the Economist Intelligence Unit):  

• cultural or national conflicts between staff

• inability of foreign managers to understand local culture

• different working styles and office norms.

At the same time, local knowledge – of anything from HR practices to consumer preferences – local language skills, and local connections and networks are increasingly valued. And the growing experience and talent available in APAC means there are plenty of local staff capable of filling management roles. No wonder, then, that in PWC’s Global CEO Survey 2012, 70% of CEOs said they plan to primarily recruit local talent whenever they have market needs. Only 17% said they plan to move talent across borders.  

Outsourcing non-core tasks, such as workspace management, to providers with local knowledge also reduces the need to commit your key managers and resources to a new market.

Obviously, even with more local hiring, there’s never going to be a complete end to business travel. People still need to meet face-to-face; build a rapport; see HQ or regional offices for themselves; even flatter a key customer with a personal visit. But there’s no need to make the same trips over and over again – high-quality video-conferencing can replace them. And it’s ever easier to access these facilities: Regus, for example, has video-conferencing studios in 1500 centres in 100 countries. 

Learn the lessons of previous travel chaos

Every so often, an event or situation occurs that restricts business travel – from health issues like SARS, to terrorism fears, to the volcanic ashcloud from Iceland that enveloped Europe in 2010. At such times, with business travel plans impossible or undesirable, companies often have to replace them with video-conferencing. Interestingly, what then tends to happen is that once the specific crisis is resolved, video-conferencing stays at a higher level than previously, as more businesses see its attractions for themselves. 

So, for example, in Europe, a year after the Icelandic ash cloud, video-conferencing enquiries at Regus were still up, on average, 75% on previously. The ashcloud taught companies the VC habit, and they kept it, replacing some of their expensive international or transcontinental travel with a quick visit to a nearby VC studio.

So, as you look into your options for expanding into new markets in 2013, take the opportunity to review your business’s travel patterns. Think about whether it’s really necessary; think about using video-conferencing instead; and think about relying more on local talent, instead of flying expat managers out to handle everything. As well as cutting your costs, it could also improve business performance. 

This Sunday, mothers will be celebrated everywhere for all that they do. In recognition of this special day, we surveyed professionals to discover what it takes for working moms to overcome obstacles when balancing work life and caring for children. Resoundingly, the answer was flexibility.

(courtesy: steppingstonellc.com)

According to the recent survey, flexible work hours, the option to work closer to home (both 95%) and the option to choose video-conferencing over travel at times (86%) were top of the list in helping working moms do it all.

Often times, women want to scale back on their careers during preschool years and then go back full-time once children are school-aged (source: WorkingMother.com). Previous Regus research has revealed 56 per cent of businesses globally value part-time returning mothers because they offer skills and experience which is difficult to find in the current market. In addition, 72 per cent believe that companies who ignore part-time returning mothers are missing out on a significant and valuable part of the employment pool.

Here are some tips to help moms get back to the workforce while maintaining a comfortable balance between profession and childcare.

Provide flexible work hours – Working a regiment 9 to 5 schedule with the technology available today is becoming an old way of life. While it’s important to be in the office for face-to-face meetings or to create rapport, flexible hours should be an option to allow working moms to meet childcare scheduling i.e. to drop their kids off at school or pick them up, if necessary.

 Allow times to work from home or remotely – Recently, Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer faced criticism when she took away the ability for employees to work remotely. While it’s important to have employees in the office, there are times when working remotely or from home should be permitted. For example, letting moms work three days in the office and two days at home, or in a flexible workspace, can create an environment in where both a business’ and a mother’s needs are met.

Understand that there will be necessary time off – Children can get sick, especially when they are in day care. Without doubt, there will be times when moms need time off to care for their child. Employers who understand this and let moms stay home to care for their children, will discover they have professionals who are much less stressed about trying to manage both professional and personal needs and can be more productive when back in the office.

Look into flexible workplaces closer to their home – Working from home isn’t always the ideal option for moms. There can be many distractions and a mother’s home office may not be fully equipped to operate at full scale. That’s when a flexible workplace, like Regus’ ThinkPods or private offices, can provide great benefits to working moms while also decreasing long commute times. It’s easy to stop into a business centre located in residential areas to use flexible working spaces and still be close to home.o home.

The data reveals New Yorkers are constantly on the hunt for a place to work:

• 62% are expected to be “always on” and available to work from any place and at any time. 

• 89% work away from their primary offices nearly half the month, on average.

While New Yorkers are accustomed to working on-the-go, they admit in the survey the places they often find themselves in are not professional workspaces: 

• 68% have worked from restaurants, bars, or coffee shops.

• 54% think it’s difficult to be productive in those locations.

To fill the void for workers on the move looking for a professional place to do business, Regus has introduced a solution with the opening of its flagship business lounge in New York City at 747 Third Avenue in Midtown (which New Yorkers ranked as the #1 neighborhood they find themselves in when they’re away from the office during a workday).  Regus also opened a second street-level lounge in the heart of Chelsea at 275 7th Avenue.  These latest investments in New York are designed to provide workers access to a professional place to collaborate, hold a meeting and get work done.  

“These are the ideal locations for professionals looking to avoid the isolation of working from home and the endless distractions of a hotel lobby or coffee shop,” said Guillermo Rotman, CEO Regus Americas.  “Our new centers can accommodate New Yorkers and business travelers who need to be in the city and near clients.  Surrounding yourself with like-minded professionals often leads to new business partnerships.”

Survey respondents also indicated some of the basics they need to stay productive are very hard to find:

• 60% need access to a power outlet

• 41% need security

• 37% need privacy 

While these needs can rarely be met at a coffee shop or restaurant, Regus’ lounges on the east and west side are designed to support modern work habits, which includes more interaction, collaboration and spontaneity.  

“We have business centers at the top addresses throughout the city,” explained Rotman.  “Demand is growing as businesses of all sizes want to be more flexible, avoiding long-term, expensive commitments.  The nature of work is changing and the opening of our street-level locations was in direct response to the diverse needs of today’s workforce.”