Is your office starting to plan for an office move? Perhaps you are planning a first office fit out for your small business. Or maybe your business has grown and you’re planning a larger scale decoration. As with decoration itself, success is all in the planning.
So we put together a definitive guide for office moves large and small.
Long Term
Planning
So how long should a good office move plan take? Three to six months is ideal. However, large scale corporate moves can take years in planning. Don’t forget that not only are there the ‘move’ logistics of packing up your current office and physically moving into the new office, but there’s all the preparation of new office space to design, plan and arrange.
Address
During the run up to an office move, ensure you’re using up all of your old stationery. Include warnings of the incumbent move in your correspondence. New office stationery and business cards should be ordered with plenty of notice. Changes to websites and email signatures should be scheduled promptly.
The New Office
Layouts
You can’t move until your destination is ready. So your new office layout needs to be organised before anyone starts boxing up their paperwork! Consider the flow of traffic, departmental communication and volume requirements when you draw up an office layout plan.
Changes
An office move is an ideal time to implement any changes to process or operations. Perhaps you want your marketing and sales departments to work more collaboratively. So structure your new office to encourage this.
Branding
It’s ideal to move into a fully decorated and branded office space. This will help to unify your workforce and begin on a positive note. Of course, circumstances don’t always play ball. Perhaps you find that you need a decorator who can continue the process discreetly after staff have moved into the space. This poses no problem to us here at HL Decorating!
Packing Up
What should you take?
Rarely do businesses take everything from their old office with them. So make a detailed list of what’s coming with you and what needs to be disposed of. Desk and storage furniture may not be suitable for your new space. A move and fit out is the ideal time to optimise the space in your new office building by commissioning bespoke furniture. Office desks may be donated to charities, and redundant electronics need to be securely and safely discarded.
Inventories
Everything that is to be moved must be clearly noted in an inventory. It’s best to allocate this responsibility to each head of department. Don’t forget the spaces that fall between departments and allocate an individual to be responsible for the inventories here. This way, things are less likely to get lost!
Stagger your move
By this we mean to move non-essential parts of your office first. This will have the effect of gradually making your office a skeleton space. Then when it comes to the final move, disruption will be minimised.
Setting up
Unload IT first
On the move day, ensure that IT equipment is the first thing to be moved in. This gives technicians and support staff opportunity to get cracking with setting up networks and phone systems.
Management
Too many cooks… don’t include too many managers in the moving day logistics. Depending on the size of your organisation, a leader at the origin site and another at your destination can direct activity. Conflicting directions breed confusion, when the important thing for move day is simply to locate the right boxes in the right spaces!
An office move is an exciting time for a growing organisation. So make sure that the office space that you move into is reflective of your business and ambitions. As experienced decorators, we work with organisations of all sizes to create a great new office space.
We are commercial painting and decorating contractors, serving London, Essex, Cambridge and the Home Counties.
We’d love to talk more about your commercial project. Contact us for a free quotation.
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