Planning and communication are the keys to a successful office move. When relocating an office, it’s essential to have a relocation strategy in place from the start, and you need to think of the best way to handle every step of the process. Without a documented strategy, you will waste time, energy and money. Read through these tips on how to come up with an effective office relocation strategy.
Answer Some Key Questions
You will have to answer some questions in advance, such as why you are moving, how many people that are leaving and why you need to move into the new space etc. Key dates, deadlines and inventory counts are other examples of information that needs to be provided in advance.
Involve the employees from the beginning. When engaging in a major business decision that will have a large impact on your employees work life it’s important to make sure they’re on board. The last thing you want is to lose some of your highest performing employees due to office relocation that heavily inconveniences everyone.
Develop a Communications Strategy
Create a communications plan and use a variety of tools to communicate the move. Make sure that everyone that should be aware of the relocation will be notified, such as partners and clients. If you’re a customer-facing operation ensuring that local customers are aware of the move as early as possible should be of prime importance. By developing a communications plan in advance; you will make everyone understand his or her roles and responsibilities for communicating the news regarding the relocation. If you have a large number of customers, you should endeavour to contact them primarily via their preferred medium. For your loyal customers with the highest Lifetime value, it may even be worth contacting them personally.
Develop A Timeline
Break down the project into more manageable bits by developing a timeline. When planning a timeline, there are a few things you need to consider, such as when you are going to move. Ideally, the move should be during your least busy time of the year.
Develop an Office Layout Plan
Before moving into the new office, you should have a planned layout for the office. You need to plan what you will bring from your current office and what needs to be purchased.
Determine what methods you will use for measuring the success of the move. If you don’t have a list of objectives the chance the process will be successful is significantly reduced. We suggest setting some goals for the relocation that fit with the SMART principle, this means goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and time-bound.
Know your employees and what they can contribute to the move. Gather together and discuss what needs to be done and ask what people can help with. By doing this, the employees will feel like they’re a part of the move and can pick tasks that they enjoy doing.
Modernize the relocation process/strategy
The old-fashioned way of moving your business is to do everything manually. By using a Customer Management System to help with the relocation process, your move can happen so much faster and more efficiently.
- Start planning early
- Send the right messages to the right segments
- Automate your messaging.
If you handle the relocation the old way, people are running around with clipboards to collect information and then typing it into spreadsheets. After the relocation is done, the data will probably be thrown away. This means that next time you are facing a move, you will have to go through the same process all over again.
Instead, you can make the relocation process much more efficient by using modern technology. With today’s technology, you are able to store your data in a central database that are integrated with your other enterprise systems.
If you’re a medium-to-large company one of the most important things when moving a business is the communication with your employees. Create a variety of email templates so you can plan exactly what information you need to send to each person and business unit, and use an automation tool to schedule the emails.
Have a backup plan
Even though you have planned everything thoroughly, there will most likely be some things that don’t go the way you expected. Come up with backup plans and be ready to adapt to new issues to keep the process running smoothly.
Hire a Moving Company That You Can Trust
Countless businesses have trusted Business Relocations with highly valuable technology and office equipment. Hear from some of these happy customers by reading some of BRL’s testimonials. We always endeavour to go the extra yards to make sure our customers are happy with the service they’ve been provided.
Moving office spaces can be an extremely stressful experience not only for your self but also your team. However, It’s also a time of excitement and an opportunity for a fresh beginning.
Our team of expert movers and packers will remove the stress of the moving process, and remove any worries you may have about potential damage to valuable technological equipment.
Business Relocations have been helping all kinds of commercial clients through the same process since 2001. With over 70 years of combined relocations management experience, we pride ourselves on the quality of service that we offer, getting your business functional again in the shortest time possible. To learn more about us and how we can help, get in touch either via our contact page
