Top 5 tips for easier relocation of your office.
Changing the place of the office is one of the best things that can happen during your work life. Because moving from one place to another is usually coming at that time, when you want to develop your business and need a new office, in a new good place, with a good view, big and comfy. But we all can already imagine what kind of problems can appear during the moving process. So we will highlight some tips which will help you to arrange your moving process more easily. Let’s get started.
1. Collect all moving information
This is the first thing you need to do before leaving your old office.
- Make a list of the transported property, furniture, and office equipment. Indicate in it the number of corners and rectangular tables, large objects, cabinets with and without glass.
- Calculate how many moving boxes you need. Please note that one includes 8 standard Crown folders or one desktop computer. Write down the number of boxes for office equipment and for documents separately.
- Describe in detail the conditions for moving: is there an elevator in the buildings, on which floor is the old and new office located, what is the distance from the office to the elevator and to the truck.
- Indicate at what time you can use the freight elevator according to the rules of the business center.
- Determine the exact date of the move. Keep in mind that weekend transfers are usually faster than weekdays.
- Make a list of the things you will pack yourself. As a rule, office employees put their personal belongings, documents are packed by accounting employees. The packaging of equipment and furniture is carried out by the specialists of our company.
2. Package your items.
This is maybe the most important thing during your moving process. Because you definitely need most of the items in your new place. What to do with items?
- Remove personal belongings from furniture completely by discarding all unnecessary items.
- Put everything that you are going to leave in the office separately, making the inscription “does not move.”
- Pack the rest of the inboxes. Put folders with documents or books on the bottom, personal items on top. Wrap fragile, breakable items with bubble wrap.
- Label the boxes as indicated in the instructions received from the manager of the company “Moving Center”.
- Prepare your office equipment for the move. Disconnect your computer and other devices from the network. Stick a parking sticker on each large piece of equipment with information about who owns it, from which office and department.
On the day of moving, boxes with personal belongings and documentation must be packed, signed, and waiting for loading. The rest will be done by the employees of the moving company.
3. Arrange cleaning
After you package your office items, you can imagine how dirty and unclean your office will look. So before leaving the place, you need to clean it, and only after that call the owner and hand over the office. As offices usually take a lot of space, this is so hard to clean by yourself. And arrange cleaning with employees is not the best idea. So, it’s better to call the cleaning service. Professional cleaners know their job very well. They have cleaned many offices before yours, so they know exactly how it works. They will hand over the shining empty office.
4. Find a moving company
Professional movers are exactly what you need in your moving process. They will arrange everything from moving the boxes to transportation. For instance, moving companies in Florida have too many services which will help you from top to bottom. Don’t save your money on moving company, you can’t arrange everything alone. A specialized company applies an integrated approach to the movement of any cargo over long or short distances.
How do they work:
- They visit the office in advance – an employee of the company estimates the number of things.
- They strictly adhere to the agreed deadlines – if the driver is late or absent from work, fines are stipulated.
- The movers are very experienced in their job, so they won’t make any mistakes.
- They inform about the technical condition of the transport, provide the necessary documentation.
- Arrangement of objects according to the principal’s plan. If you mark boxes, furniture, and apply the same signs on an office in a new office, the movers will move it to the right place.
- If there are long distances, it’s not a problem, the cargo will help.
5. Move and build a new office
When the organizational issues are settled, the renovation is ready, and the furniture is purchased, you can choose a moving service. It is best to do this one and a half to two weeks before the move so that you can decide without haste and start collecting things.
When choosing a cargo transportation service, you need to decide what suits you best: transportation with itemized expenses or a complex move.
The first option may be cheaper, but you need to carefully assess the weight and volume of all things – you will have to pay extra even for a small overweight person. Therefore, this option is suitable for moving to a small office. It is more convenient for a large company to order a complex move: the carrier will calculate the total cost of transportation, pack things himself, take them and arrange them at the indicated places.
A few days before the move, you need to draw up a plan for the new office, describing the placement of equipment at the new workplaces. This will help to organize the office relocation without overlays and quickly “settle down” in a new place.
Think about your employees too. About a week before moving, ask them to go through all the documents and folders in order to get rid of unnecessary things and move only the necessary documents to the new office.
If you are moving with the help of a moving company, it is better to schedule it for a weekend. Employees will rest, and the office will move. If you are moving on your own, choose a day when the workload is minimal.
Also, think in advance about where the employees will work while the experts are transporting and unloading furniture. Not a bad solution is to transplant the entire office into a coworking space. There you can rent an individual, fully equipped space for the required number of employees. A more economical option is to allow employees to work from home.
Moving to another office is always a rather troublesome task for a company. You need to think over the terms, choose the right premises, and notify the employees.
Experiences can be minimized if you correctly organize the office relocation:
- appoint a responsible person
- start choosing a place for a new office in advance and do it together with a designer
- close debts to the previous landlord
- make an estimate and estimate the timing of the move
- select furniture and materials for the new premises, decide on the layout
- find a moving company
- give employees the opportunity to prepare for the move
These simple steps will help you move your company office quickly and cost-effectively.