A View from the Top: Eugen Miropolski, WeWork’s managing director, on making the workspace a happier place

The world of work is changing, according to the MD, who says 'people want to find meaning and purpose in their lives... and it’s not just the millennials'

WeWork operates more than 250 locations worldwide (Reuters)

He is wearing a black t-shirt bearing the slogan – stylishly picked out in white – “Do What You Love.” Eugen Miropolski, the MD of WeWork, really does love his work. “I still remember the first time I walked into a WeWork office over 3 years ago,” he recalls, fondly. “On Broadway in New York. It was just a completely different atmosphere to anywhere I’d been before. There was this buzz and a sense of belonging. I immediately fell in love with the idea. I started thinking – how can I help people be part of that?”

He is – as one of his colleagues puts it – “ridiculously young”. He was born in Tallinn, Estonia, 31 years ago. His family moved to Rendsburg in northern Germany when he was aged six. He speaks Russian, supports Germany, and was rooting for England at the World Cup. The WeWork ethos is truly internationalist, or transnational.

The shared workspace company has already achieved a global presence. Starting up in New York in 2010, it spread to the US West Coast, bounced over to China and Australia, and has now thoroughly penetrated Europe and the UK, where it has 26 sites with another 10 in the pipeline. As Miropolski points out: “It’s hard to keep track of the figures, because they are changing week by week, we’re expanding so fast.”

The reason for its success is that the company has tapped into two universal human imperatives: to work and network. “No one wants to clock in, clock out, and do something depressing,” says Miropolski. “These are values [working and networking] that everyone around the world shares, whether in Buenos Aires or Seoul.”

Somewhat closer to home, I visited the WeWork building in Brook Green, Hammersmith, to the west of London, and I felt something of the same frisson Miropolski experienced when he first walked into the New York base. If you want to get the idea of this converted warehouse on Shepherd’s Bush Road, think first of all those dark Satanic mills of the nineteenth century, beloved of Marx and Engels and serviced by downtrodden masses. Something like hell on earth. Now think of the opposite. That’s WeWork. More like paradiso than inferno. All glass and light and Scandinavian minimalism. With comfortable chairs and clean air and friendly baristas serving up flat whites. And above all, a diverse group of people beavering away – mainly on Macs – while amiably communing and sparking ideas.

The world of work is changing, Miropolski reckons. “People want to find meaning and purpose in their lives, rather than just collect a pay cheque. And it’s not just the millennials either, it’s everyone from their 20s to their 80s.” That is what Miropolski inclusively labels the “we” generation.

Hardened cynic though I am, I have to admit there is a palpable sense of fun and energy about the place. It’s not an office, it’s a pleasure dome. Maybe a new manual may be needed, “The Joy of Work”. One small example: I went past one of the larger rooms – you could see in through the glass partition – where a meeting to do with “human resources” was taking place. Not overly exciting, you might think. But there was spontaneous clapping and cheering and laughter, and a party atmosphere. Except at Christmas, when you’ve downed tools – and after a lot of imbibing – you don’t come across this sort of scene too often.

Miropolski is infectiously evangelical. “When you’re a WeWork member, you have 24/7 access to over 300 locations worldwide,” he says. “Say you want to go to Tokyo and you don’t have a network…” The way he speaks, I can’t imagine anything worse than not having a network. He shows me what I need to do. I open the app. I type: “I’m looking for a web designer,” or a data analyst, or whatever. Within minutes I will be bombarded with responses: “I’m right here in the building.” It works like a dating site. In WeWork there are no lonely hearts, no alienated lost souls. It’s constant collaboration and symbiosis. Thus creating the “community”. WeWork is probably the closest thing in reality to Charles Fourier’s utopia of the “phalanstery”, in the age of “Harmony”, where labour has been transformed into pleasure.

“We started with freelancers and startups,” says Miropolski, “but they soon attracted mid size companies, and now large enterprises want to be in this environment too”. A quarter of Fortune 500 companies are WeWork members.

Miropolski and his family were refugees when they came to Germany and now WeWork is committed to hiring and supporting refugees. “It’s particularly meaningful to me,” says Miropolski. “Here they learn the new skills they need to get into the job market.” WeWork has also set up the “Creator Awards” scheme – deadline for applications in September, with finals in London in October – for innovators and artists with more vision than capital, to promote and provide funding for “ideas that can have impact”.

I once had to swap offices with a young novelist because she reckoned she could only write in natural light and mine had a decent window onto the street. I dismissed her attitude as magical thinking, but WeWork would take her perfectly seriously. This is the magic kingdom, in which you get the space you need to work in most effectively. There are boardrooms and phone booths for people who like small spaces. Feng shui comes as standard. When you need a break you can choose from yoga, boxing, massage, Mandarin, or mindfulness. And Wednesday is “wellness Wednesday”. Miropolski keeps fit jogging around Hyde Park. “When you’re working hard, it’s so important to take care of your wellbeing and be healthy,” he says.

WeWork is more than an office provider. It’s a meta industry. What it produces is productivity. I left Hammersmith with a definite glow, feeling toned up and – potentially – more creative just by being there. On the other hand, I’ll probably pass on the WeWork “summer camp”, when 8,000 WeWorkers descend on the Kent countryside for an orgy of inspirational talks and “plein air” bonding. Miropolski says: “We had this idea of bringing people together, to connect and get to know each other and share the mission.” He speaks like a man who has seen the Promised Land, adding: “Everyone wants to be part of something bigger than themselves.”