Business Relocation for Beginners
Posted on 19/08/2014
Moving your business into a new office is often a good sign: it might mean that business is booming and that investors are flocking to back you up. You may have hired new employees to help take your enterprise to the next level, or maybe you’re moving to a better location to be closer to your clients—all of which are indications of a bright future to be proud of. But though your new office may very well be a cause for celebration, there’s probably one thing about it you’re dreading: relocation. That is, the actual moving in to the new office can be a huge pain, and can easily cause disruptions in your daily operations. If you’re a smaller business in particular, that is either moving everything yourself or working closely with a moving company, the process can be especially disruptive. So here are a few tips to help you ease the transition and get your business back up and running as soon as possible:
• Plan for Expenses: Whether you’re saving money by moving into a new office or will be welcoming a pricier lease into your lives, you can’t forget to calculate in the actual cost of moving. It’s very likely that you’ll want to hire movers to carry heavy desks and delicate computers, or at the very least a truck or van. In addition, you’ll probably need to purchase new furniture for the new space. Plus, there are those hidden costs like changing your address, buying new signs, and more. And the worst part of this is that you may very well be losing money from the diversion of productivity away from business functions. These factors illustrate the importance of thinking carefully about expenses and then crafting a detailed budget for your move.
• Examine the New Office: way before you actually undertake the move, it’s important to create a detailed plan of how the new office will be set up. So take an inventory of the items in your current office, then spend some time with coworkers/employees to examine and plan for the new space. You might find that furniture from your old office won’t fit in the new office, and thus will save yourself the time and effort of having to move it. This is also an ample opportunity for spring cleaning: if you don’t need it, don’t move it.
• Team up: You work as a team with your coworkers and employees on a daily basis, so you should have some sort of synergy between you. Take advantage of this by breaking down responsibilities for the move to different employees, assigning according to skills and expertise they might have. Your accounting team, for example, should take care of budgeting, while your human resources team can help organize other employees during the move. However, while diffusing responsibilities can make things more efficient, you’ll still need to make sure that communication is tight and that there’s some kind of hierarchy of decision making set up to counteract any office politics that might pop up.
• Incentivize moving: Moving over a weekend is a good idea as none of your weekly productivity is lost. It might, however, anger your employees, which could well turn out worse in the end. In fact, moving is likely to put a great amount of stress on your employees/coworkers no matter what, as it takes them out of their routine and distracts them from what they’re really there to do. So incentivize the move. Turn it into a party: you could, for instance, provide catered food from a good restaurant, and/or throw a happy hour at a nearby bar afterwards. Little things like these can go a long way distracting everyone from the tedious task of moving, and can boost morale as you enter your new office environment
Brian Shreckengast is a writer at SelfStorageDeals.com, a leading price-focused search engine for finding cheap self-storage units. For more knowledge on moving and storing, check out the SSD blog.
