This project develops an electronic service in which company employees can reserve office facilities – just like apartments can be booked in the Airbnb service.

What kind of problem is the project trying to solve?

The company's own premises do not always meet the needs of its employees in different situations. It would be useful for employees to be able to reserve office facilities also from other companies through a digital service.

Objective: to develop a service for sharing office facilities

The project aims to develop an "AIRBNB for offices" operating model based on the digital sharing economy. In the operating model, the sharing of office facilities is implemented as a service. In practice, the office facilities of large companies will be opened for shared use by creating open coworking spaces that can be reserved online.

A company sharing space in the service receives the right to use similar spaces in other companies. The company can then offer several new working spaces for its employees to take advantage of as necessary. In the experimental project, the rights to use the facilities will be given to the personnel of the companies participating in the pilot project.

In addition, the project investigates the use of the facilities and the companies' and users' wishes and opinions on the operating model. Based on this, a model of the operating practice and the related services will be built for international commercialisation.

What is done in this project?

What is most important in the Airbnb for offices experiment is to create an electronic service and to test how the project is received by the managements of companies and by staffing and property services and how they introduce it to their personnel in cooperation with the organisation implementing the trial.

In the first stage of the project, an electronic platform is produced for the service and the companies and facilities participating in the trial are surveyed.

The project has carried out surveys of target companies, contacted them and developed the physical facility concept. The project has been developed to also cover property companies so that the facilities available in the service can be offered to companies even before they decide on sharing their own facilities in the platform.

A preliminary concept of the electronic platform has been produced and will be developed into the final online service at the beginning of 2018.

Who benefits?

Companies and their employees