Meet the team, Valeria Centre Manager Viridis Dublin

How and when did you discover coworking?

I first discovered co-working and serviced offices in 2016; I was looking for a job in Dublin and was hired by a different serviced office provider.

When did you become the Dublin Centre Manager?

19 August 2019

How would you describe the community?

In the centre I would say that there is a strong sense of community, everyone knows their neighbours and have a friendly chat with them. We have a good relationship with all members, and we try to stimulate them to get involved, get to know each other and interact with other members and us. Some members prefer to stay on their own, but the vast majority enjoys being part of the community. We like getting to know each member and making them feel at home.

Do you host any members events to bring the community together?

Pre-Covid-19, we used to host at least one event per month. They are very popular among our members as they get to do something different while networking. Some examples of what we have done are wine and cheese tasting, gingerbread cookie decoration masterclass, healthy breakfasts with a smoothie bowl, pancake Tuesdays. We even had a chocolate fountain for Valentine’s Day last year.

I am looking forward to hosting more in the future!

What are the enjoyable aspects of working for Us&Co?

I like the complexity of my role. As Centre Manager, I don’t simply look after a building. There’s sales, customer service, health and safety, maintenance, accounts, customer satisfaction and retention, event planning, team management, a lot of decision making. It’s a very varied job, and it never gets boring. The other best part, which I miss the most now that we are mainly working from home, is my team. I believe that teamwork makes the dream work, and I couldn’t be happier with Niall and Jayne by my side, helping me.

What are the key aspects of managing a coworking space?

I think I said the above, but to rephrase, it involves managing a space or some accounts and dealing with people and their needs. And a lot more. It’s complex but fun.

What has it been like to manage a centre during COVID-19?

It hasn’t been easy; I have to admit. The nature of the job is centre-based and customer based. So it wasn’t easy finding the way to reach out to our members and make sure they are doing well, and their needs still met, while maintaining the centre running and covid-19 proofing it. Especially at the beginning, when it was a novelty, we had to come up with a plan on how to handle the pandemic in the centre(s), so a lot of time and energy went into writing policies and updating our house rules.

Also, the team has suffered from it; we went from working together 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, to not seeing each other for literally months. We put together a series of team events called “Livin la Vida lockdown” to help. We would virtually meet to do various activities ranging from Origami to cooking, from drawing to quizzes. That helped a lot, keeping the morale up and the team engaged.

Valeria is the Centre Manager at Us&Co Dublin