Top Tips for an Easy Office Relocation
Top Tips for an Easy Office Relocation
When a business needs to relocate, it is a time of significant change for all staff involved. Whether the move is due to your success and growth, or just because you’ve come to the end of your current lease, it all results in major upheaval, and as such, requires a bit of thought to help it run smoothly. Luckily, there are simple strategies you can apply to achieve an easy office relocation.
Based on our extensive experience as professional office movers we have compiled this article with valuable information to help you not only get through your move, but even turn it into a beneficial exercise for your business.
Finding Your Ideal Premises
Having a great physical address from where to do business is crucial. It can be a huge contributing factor of your success. Taking the time early on to evaluate your needs is important – not only your current needs, but what you envision your future needs to be too. Be positive: what do you hope you’ll need in 5, 10 or 20 years? Think about why you’re moving in the first place, and be honest about whether your potential new sites address those reasons. If you have a clear list of these criteria, it will narrow down your list of options to only the genuine contenders.
Get Organised
It’s no surprise with a complex exercise like moving office that you’ll need a great plan. Everything from gathering details of your existing lease to how much you want to spend on the process should be taken into account. This is also the time you should have a clear idea of who the key decision makers for the move are. Especially with larger organisations, they should include a mix of people from different levels, so you get an idea of how various areas of your business will be impacted by the move.
Some principal considerations to begin your moving plan are:
What do you wish to achieve with the move?
Where do you want to move to?
What are your space requirements?
When do you need to leave by?
When do you need to be in by?
Are there any undesirable features you definitely want to avoid in your new location?
Are there any must-have features for your new office?
What length and type of lease do you want?
What is your budget?
In the process of answering these suggested questions, you’ll likely come up with additional questions relevant to your specific business. Answer them as best you can at this point, and revisit them when new information comes to hand. This will give you a solid start to a winning moving plan.
Move In Time
A clear timeline of the moving plan that is clearly distributed and understood by your staff will help to give the relocation structure, and help your team relax. Allocate plenty of time, or as much time as you are able to each stage. A minimum of six months is ideal for starting to prepare your staff for the upcoming changes, although larger offices could need as long as 18 months to make a smooth transition.
Obtain input about your ideal new office location and layout, and see how that fits into your allocated budget. You’ll also need time to change your internet and phone services, and update permits and insurance policies.
Relocation Resources
Once you have a plan and a timeline sorted, you’ll need people to turn this into your ideal, easy office relocation. You’ll likely have a team of people who’ve made all the decisions up to this point, but it is a good idea to enlist help to efficiently carry out such a big, complex, and time consuming job.
Allocate tasks where people’s strengths lie. Your ideal members should have fantastic communication skills, as they may be required to liaise with external parties (ideally, pick a single point of contact for external parties), as well as their fellow staff members. A positive, helpful and resilient attitude will be a massive asset, as the stresses of an office move will test anyone.
Take care to not assign crucial tasks to people that are already under the pump. Some people may want to help, or you may think someone is ideal to help with the move, but if they don’t have the time and are not available, they won’t be able to do either task properly.
Select people you trust to receive and pass on information from senior management, and to make important decisions. They should also have the trust of the staff to receive positive or negative feedback about the process.
Naturally, these people should have strong organizational skills, both for people and processes. If your moving team can work in an organised and harmonious manner, it will go a long way to extending those attributes to the whole move.
Book Movers and Cleaners 1-3 Months Ahead of the Move
Quality movers and cleaners can book out faster than you think. Particularly if your ideal movers accommodate overnight or weekend moves to minimise downtime, those slots will fill up quickly. Make the call early. It will set a clear date to have everything ready by, and will ensure you get your preferred moving and cleaning dates.
Update your Marketing 1-3 Months Ahead of the Move
Things like your shipping and billing address can be updated well ahead of time so your vendors can adjust with plenty of time. Order new signage, letterhead or business cards a month ahead of your move so your staff can get down to business as soon as they arrive at the new location.If you need new signage. Don’t forget to update your website, contact details in online directories and social media.
Practice the Mover’s Mantra
It’s amazing how, every time, moving premises seems to multiply the amount of ‘stuff’ you have. The amount of papers, equipment, boxes, files, and general rubbish can seem huge, which is why setting time aside to tackle this is necessary.
Look at the positives and think of it as a great opportunity to de-clutter and prioritise. You won’t want to encumber your lovely new premises with old, obsolete paraphernalia, so out with the old! Employ the time-honoured ‘mover’s mantra’ to your clean-out process: sell, toss, recycle or donate? This gives you a system to get rid of things and only keep what you’ll need. You can also make digital versions of older documents to save space.
Clear Communication
The way you manage and communicate the moving process with your staff will be the determining factor whether your business and staff make an easy office relocation and arrive at their new location energised and ready to work.
Ask anyone: moving is difficult. It removes the familiar and challenges us to re-learn things we’d taken for granted. Depending on how you handle the move and how responsive you are to your staff’s needs, you could actually use the move as a chance to boost performance and create a better work culture. Be open about the progress of the move, and listen to how your staff is responding to the changes. Hold face-to-face meetings so people feel able to talk about the move, and see that others are feeling similarly. Change management will be a big factor of a successful move, so be empathetic and try to give everyone ownership over the changes.
Professional Office Moves
If you’d like to make an easy office relocation, get in touch with Optimove.
We understand that your time is money, and do everything we can to give you an efficient, stress-free moving day. We conduct a pre-move consultation so we know how to organise our moving role with your needs and priorities in mind. Your move can therefore be handled according to your requests, so the most needed goods can be loaded last and delivered first. You’ll also have an allocated moving coordinator so you always have someone to contact if you have any questions or requests.
At Optimove, we work 24/7, 365 days a year. We can carry out your relocation day or night, and even on public holidays – anything to minimise or even remove downtime. This way, your staff and clients experience the smallest disturbance.
If you would rather leave all the hard work to us, we’d be more than happy to help! Our Full Service moves mean we do all of the packing and unpacking for you. Your job will be to simply arrive at your new location and hit the ground running.
Contact the friendly Optimove team on 07 3905 3223, or contact us online. Leave the moving to us so you can get back to doing what you do best!
