17 June 2009
This is working news

The 2009 eHampshire Conference was the venue for the formal announcement of an exciting new initiative that will offer entrepreneurs, business start-ups, home-based businesses and commuters the chance to work and meet locally and avoid the stress and cost of the journey to work.

With more than 50% of Business Start-ups home-based - and with 60% failing to make it beyond the third year of operation, it is hoped that the agency supported collaborative working environment of a Smarter Working Centre (SWC) will improve these disturbing statistics.

Project Manager Tony Corbin added "The SWC offers an alternative to the isolation of regular home-based working and its impact on the home and in particular family. Not everyone thrives or indeed survives! Many otehrs don't even get the opportunity to work from home as their property is simply not big enough/not conducive to productive working. Now we have an affordable alternative, your local Smarter Working Centre. Space can be booked by the hour, there's no lease to sign or heat and light bills to pay. Instead you simply pay by the hour and ONLY when you use the facility"

Depending upon the membership package chosen, work-space can work out at as little as £3 per hour or £12 per day. Even less if organisations are willing to pre-book longer periods.

The SWC network will be established over the coming months. Already facilities are available in Whitchurch and Fordingbridge and within the next few weeks (end of November) these will be joined by centres in Havant, Fareham, Aldershot, Gosport. The eventual aim is that in Hampshire,  'you will never be more than twenty minutes away from a Smarter Working Centre'.

The SWC website, that will offer on-line booking and secure PAYPAL payment, will come fully on-stream during the MATiSSE Smart Commute Week (2nd to 6th November. As an extra incentive to try out the radical new, SWC way of working, Hampshire businesses are being encouraged to visit www.smarterworkingcentreshiow.org where if they register as a member by 6th November, they will go into a draw to win £200 of SWC work-space use absolutely FREE. Indeed everyone wins, because those who become members by 6th November will also be able to get a FREE hour at the SWC of their choice.