Every office has to move at a certain point. But whether it’s for good reasons or not, relocating is no easy feat for businesses. It reduces productivity and creates financial risks. Moreover, some of your employees may not be happy with the move and turn in their resignation letters months ahead of the moving day.
It’s stressful enough to plan the logistics of your relocation, and having to sort out human resource problems on top of that isn’t helping. But that’s just inevitable in some cases, especially if the reason for your move has barely anything to do with your office’s accessibility. Maybe you’re moving because of the pandemic, which made you unable to pay for the monthly rent of your space. As such, you had no other choice but to relocate to a cheaper space. And usually, cheaper spaces are in less accessible areas.
Circumstances like those will really force you to relocate to keep your business alive, even if it means facing the risk of disappointing some of your employees.
And that’s just one of the many other challenges in moving offices. Let’s identify the rest below, and explore solutions.
Challenges in Moving Offices
1. Lost Productivity
The moving period of your company causes a significant downtime, resulting in lost productivity. It can make you lose customers because your employees can’t accommodate them for a time. Office work is disrupted as well because equipment has to be removed and then reinstalled in the new office. Hence, your employees will struggle to complete their tasks.
2. Cost
Relocating costs money, and the actual costs can be higher than what you anticipated. If you handle your own move to save money, you then face the risk of damaging your office equipment. And if they do get damaged, you’ll pay for expensive repairs.
In addition, if you move into a bigger space, your monthly rent will increase. Alternatively, if you move into a smaller, less accessible space to cut down on rent, your operational costs will rise because your suppliers may take longer to reach you. Your company transportation expenses, of course, will increase as well.
3. Customer Access
If your suppliers will have a harder time accessing your new location, then so will your customers. You’ll also face the same problem if you’re a B2B business with clients regularly coming to your office. However, that problem won’t be as big if most of your clients are around your new area, hence your relocation.
4. Alerting Your Clients and the Community About the Move
Informing your clients and the community about your relocation can be easier said than done. You can make the announcement via Facebook, and even so, there’d still be some important people out of the loop. Emailing each of your suppliers and clients may work best, but you have to do that ahead of time, then constantly send reminders from then on. Failing to let your clients and your community know about your move will cause problems such as having them visit your old location and finding it abandoned.
Moving Offices Efficiently
As with any major business endeavor, solutions to moving challenges also exist. The first step to moving efficiently is getting your team on the same page about your relocation.
Discuss with your team the benefits of your relocation. Whether the reason is related to growth or not, moving offices should always benefit your business in the end. The benefits will give your team more initiative to work efficiently during the move. If you’re relocating because of less desirable reasons, like the pandemic, be transparent with your team to avoid employee resentment and unexpected resignations.
Once you and your team meet eye to eye, tackle logistics. Since downtime is one the biggest problems you’ll face, you need to ensure that your employees can take on minimal logistical tasks. To do that, hiring the best office moving company is the smartest solution. Professional movers are more adept at transporting fragile equipment than your own employees. So even if you have to pay them a fee, it’s money well-spent because the risk for damaged equipment declines. With regard to important papers and other business documents, though, assign those to your managers.
On your moving day, expect some delays and minor issues to pop up. No move is perfect even if you’ve got efficient staff helping you. So create a backup plan that can address problems quickly.
And by the time you arrive in your new space, things will be overwhelming, so ensure that you’ve taken photos of your old space. That way, you can arrange your furniture and equipment with a layout in mind. Downtime is inevitable in this scenario, but at least, you’ve reduced them, and can be ready to resume operations as soon as possible.