Are you preparing for an office relocation? That’s great! From time to time, every business changes in scope, requiring different offices. Sometimes it’s about the size, sometimes it’s about the location; but at the end of the day, a change of scenery will do all employees some good. Still, it can be tough to maintain productivity when moving office.
You are bound to lose quite a lot of time on this task. Plus, the staff might be distracted, mail could get misplaced, and there are bound to be some interrupted services.
But there are ways to counteract this loss of productivity. That’s why we’ve prepared a helpful guide for you below.
Making sensible plans
So, you need to maintain productivity when moving office, but you’re not sure of how you should achieve that properly. Well, as both a manager and an employee, the first step is not a real step at all.
Rather, it’s all about approaching the relocation with the right mindset. And that’s an analytical one! You want to be utterly level-headed and rational throughout this entire process. Naturally, the only way to achieve that is to have a good plan regarding the relocation early on.
Much of it will depend on your relocation, naturally. For example, your plans will be different if planning on moving to FL from NYC, compared to relocation to an office across town.
But playing your cards right will mean that your office can run smoothly even throughout the move, with downtime being at its bare minimum.
Drawing up a smart timeline
If you want to maintain productivity when moving office, you’ll have to devise an extremely tight schedule. After all, for those working in the fast-growing sectors, each second has a monetary value. That’s why wasting time is the last thing you want to do, even during an office relocation.
So, first and foremost, you’ll need to set a timeline for all the moving-related chores that have to be completed. If you want all the needed tasks to be done, you’ll have to delegate them to the right people, and on time.
Also, don’t kid yourself about the amount of time you’ll need for this relocation. If you ask experts, you’ll see that even the smallest office can take up to three months to prepare for commercial relocation.
And anything larger than that will take six to eight months at the very least. As you can see, this kind of move needs to be planned out way in advance.
Plus, once you do relocate to your new office; you don’t want to waste any time tinkering with the minutiae of setting everything up.
So, before you unpack everything and start dealing with the office infrastructure; make sure you’ve designed a very specific floorplan for the new space.
This plan should contain the precise locations of every piece of bulky office equipment; like the employees’ work stations, or the photocopiers. Also, make sure you’ve figured out the new seating arrangement for everyone.
Hiring a professional moving company
Let’s be realistic – any second that you or your employees spend working on the move is a time that you’re not spending on your actual work.
That’s why your business activities may suffer during this period if you don’t hire professional movers to do the job for you.
If you ask us, hiring a moving company which has a degree of experience with commercial relocation is probably the best thing you can do. Such movers can help you not only with the heavy lifting, but the logistics as well.
That’s why you want only to work with the moving companies that have already done many commercial relocations. They can help you plan everything out, pack up all of your office equipment carefully, and physically relocate it to the new offices.
Informing everyone
While employers struggle to maintain productivity when moving office, the task of keeping your workers on track is not always easy.
Never underestimate how important it is to inform all of the workers about the relocation on time. That gives them ample time to adjust their workflow to the relocation.
Also, you will need to tell your suppliers about the relocation. Missing out on this could result in them sending goods to your old address. Plus, you also need to handle the utility companies. Before anyone starts working there, the new premises need to have Internet, power, and other basic services.
Also, these days your company is probably present on the Internet. In that case, you’ll need to change your address on your company website, and in all other Internet directories. If you have the budget for it, print out new marketing materials with updated details.
Talk to your customers
It’s important that your clients or customers know about this big change as well. That’s not crucial if you want to maintain productivity when moving office per se, but it is important in the sense of customer relations.
Sharing such important business details with your customer base helps you build long-term relations with them, and establish trust.
Send out more than one mailing to your clients, to ensure that your relocation is something they definitely know about.
And seeing as maintaining goodwill is important, tell them everything about how this will benefit them as customers. If you’re moving to a more easily accessible location, you can actually make a marketing stunt out of this.
Also, make sure that even those who don’t use the Internet, such as the elderly, know the details of your new location.
