I’ve spent enough time around coworking spaces to see that community managers, the people meant to bring these spaces to life, are often overwhelmed with tasks that have nothing to do with what they signed up for.
Instead of focusing on getting to know members, facilitating connections, improving processes, and helping the business grow, they’re stuck handling everything else.
Processing invoices, troubleshooting Wi-Fi, dealing with room booking conflicts…
Somewhere along the way, some operators lost sight of what makes a community manager valuable. Or maybe they haven’t, but they just can’t escape the daily operational challenges their teams face.
Whatever the reason, coworking businesses need to stop treating this role as a catch-all for operational problems if they want to succeed. What I’m sharing here comes from both my personal experience in coworking spaces and my current role at Archie.
What a community manager is actually meant to do
I’m not the official coworking dictionary. The definition of a coworking community manager can vary depending on a business’s needs, but at its core, certain key responsibilities define their mission:
Build relationships
They are the first point of contact for members, making them feel welcome, heard, and part of something bigger. They help new members integrate, facilitate connections, and create a sense of belonging that keeps people coming back. A prerequisite for this is actually knowing the community, which can be as simple as walking up to a member and starting a conversation.
Run events
Whether it’s networking meetups, lunch-and-learns, or community breakfasts, these initiatives make a coworking space feel like more than just an office. They also create opportunities to get to know members and help them connect with each other.
Create an environment that helps members thrive
A great community manager understands the needs of freelancers, startups, and growing teams. They make introductions, encourage collaborations, and ensure the space supports productivity. Part of this also involves managing operations, from maintaining the physical space to refining internal processes.
Act as a growth engine for the business
Community managers are not just social coordinators. They should understand what drives members to leave, what keeps them engaged, how to encourage upsells, and how to improve the experience for prospective members. They’re not responsible for all aspects of growth, but they play a major role in retention.
At its best, the role of a community manager blends hospitality, networking, and business development. But too often, they don’t get to focus on any of that and spend 90% of their time on day-to-day operations.
One community manager on Reddit claims that 90% of their time is spent on “nonsense.”
“90% of my day is dealing with nonsense. People destroying the bathroom, moving furniture back to where it belongs, pulling pencils out of the dishwasher, member drama… super weird stuff. Actual operations (cleaning, tours, collecting rent) is such a small part of my day.”
This may be an extreme case and not reflective of the industry at large, but certainly a lot of operators would at least in part relate to that statement.
Why is this happening?
I don’t have all of the answers, and I am not a community manager myself, but I believe there are two main reasons behind this: one is related to hiring, and the other one is related to process automation and technology.
Let’s start with the hiring part.
Is there a mismatch between hiring expectations and reality? (Yes, there is).
When coworking operators hire for this role, they look for outgoing, creative, and business-savvy people. They might look for strong communication and interpersonal skills, entrepreneurial and driven people, professionals that have worked in community, event management, and other roles. They want someone who can build a thriving community and drive growth, not an office administrator.
Yet, once the job starts, the reality often looks like this:
- Instead of spending time onboarding and getting to know new members, they’re dealing with printer malfunctions.
- Instead of fostering collaboration and networking opportunities, they’re handling missing equipment in a meeting room.
- Instead of running events that bring members together, they’re answering emails about lost keycards.
This disconnect is frustrating, not just for community managers but really anyone, including residents. The person is hired with one goal in mind, but their daily demands force these employees to become problem-solvers for operational headaches.
New hires may not feel comfortable pushing back on tasks. They may be reluctant to ask for more budget or flexibility and end up feeling like they just have to handle everything. So you have talented people stuck at their desks, copy-pasting and handling tasks that should be automated.
The outcome? A coworking experience that feels more like a transaction than a true community.
It’s worth noting that many coworking businesses do empower their community managers to thrive and create great experiences for their members every day. What I’m highlighting here is a common challenge, not a universal truth across all coworking environments.
So what sets the best spaces apart? They measure their community teams against KPIs that align more with high-end hospitality rather than metrics like the number of tours given per week or the volume of social media posts published.
So what’s getting in their way?
Why do so many community managers get pulled away from the work they were hired to do?
- Outdated processes
Many spaces still rely on manual systems for things that could be automated. Guess one thing you cannot automate? Human relationships. Unlike check-ins, door access sharing, automated guest WiFi, invoice reminders, post-event surveys, which are all things that can be put on autopilot with the right processes and technology.
- Understaffing
Obviously this point is very specific to the conditions of each space, but it’s not uncommon to have very few people taking care of… well pretty much everything. No one can successfully build a strong community while juggling five different roles. Which also brings to how you should structure and split responsibilities in a community team, but that’s a whole different topic we’ll talk about another time.
- Misalignment of priorities
Operators sometimes see community managers as a fix-all for every issue that arises in the space. Instead of being the face of the community, they become the default problem-solver for everything from tech issues to lost deliveries.
The problem isn’t that these tasks don’t matter. It’s that they shouldn’t be on the plate of someone whose primary role is to cultivate relationships and drive business growth.
Let’s talk about technology and automation
I’m not going to tell you that choosing the right coworking software will solve all of these problems. Yes, a good solution will make your team’s life much easier (that’s something I hear from Archie customers all the time), but ultimately it’s all about the willingness to invest time and resources into improving the impact of what your community managers do, no matter what technology your space runs on.
Some examples?
Let’s take something very simple: key cards.
As a community manager you need to:
- Issue one for new members.
- Reactivate them when they deactivate.
- Collect them when memberships end.
- Replace them when they get lost.
- Manually change permissions if you have multiple locations or different opening hours based on membership plans.
- You might even have to worry about credential sharing.
And on top of that you need to facilitate access for visitors or day-pass users which may not get access to one.
So one simple item can result in a lot of work here and there, which adds up.
And you can literally get rid of all of that through technology (by automatically issuing mobile passes via your coworking app) and make sure your team spends ZERO minutes a month worrying about key cards.
The same applies to invoices, access to printers, meeting room management and many other things.
And sure, if the sink in one of the bathrooms stops working, technology won’t fix that. You’ll need to pick up the phone, call someone, and let your members know it’s out of order. But the point is not to eliminate all operational tasks, but to eliminate enough of them to free up time that can be allocated to higher impact initiatives. There will always be different things to take care of, they just should not become the main part of the job.
What’s the impact of letting community managers focus on… community?
When they actually get to focus on community-building, the impact on the coworking space can be significant.
- Higher member retention
People don’t stay in a coworking space just for the Wi-Fi and good coffee (and that’s assuming that the coffee is actually good!). They stay because they feel connected, because they know the people around them, and because the space adds value to their work life. A strong community increases retention rates, reducing churn and boosting long-term revenue.
- Word-of-mouth marketing
Coworking spaces with engaged communities may not need to spend as much on marketing, or better said, they can more easily leverage their existing network to attract likeminded individuals and companies. When members feel like they’re part of something special, they talk about it. When companies find that their employees love the environment, they’ll mention it to other founders. They bring in friends, colleagues, and business partners, creating a steady stream of referrals.
- More upsell opportunities
A well-run community naturally leads to business growth. Members who feel engaged are more likely to upgrade to dedicated desks, rent meeting rooms, or join events and activities that are organized, which can also represent a source of revenue. And this is even more important for startups, which will often outgrow their original office area and will happily upgrade to a larger one in the same coworking space instead of moving elsewhere.
- More connections with the local community
At the end of the day, coworking spaces are not just about real estate. They are about people, and that extends beyond the walls of your building. Expanding the network to include local businesses, investors, companies, associations, and community-led meetups can make a huge difference. It helps create better events, reach more people, and ultimately build something that goes beyond the physical space you manage.
Are we ready?
Coworking spaces thrive when their people thrive. And you need to be very intentional in making that happen, because unfortunately it does not magically happen on its own. And it all starts with letting community managers be community managers—not office administrators, IT support, or financial coordinators. Some of those functions can (and perhaps should) be absorbed, but they should definitely not overtake the role entirely.
If we want coworking spaces to be more than just flexible offices, we need to start treating the people who run them like the invaluable assets they are.
Are we ready to make that shift?
