Moving offices is always stressful, whether you are moving on to larger premises to keep up with your growing business or downsizing to save on costs. There is a lot to do and a lot to think about to make sure that everything ends up in the right place.
Office relocation is a balance of various factors, all of which could go wrong at any moment if left in the wrong hands. You need to make sure that everyone knows where they are going, what they need and then arrange for the whole office to pick up sticks and be reinstalled elsewhere.
The way that you go about moving makes a huge difference and if you want to make it as truly stressful as possible, here’s what you can do.
Give your staff minimal notice
The best thing you can do to really ramp up the stress levels in your office is to give your staff as little notice about the move as possible. If you can, leave it until literally a couple of days before and then call a meeting to tell them to pack up. This will almost certainly ensure that all sorts of vital equipment and files accidentally go missing or get forgotten. It will also mean that in the mad panic, mugs will be broken, no work will get done and your middle managers will be torn between calls from clients requesting information and angry employees doing the same. Don’t worry about effective communication.
To make things worse, you could also fail to give them the new address so that they can’t start to make new travel plans. Giving your staff the opportunity to figure out their new route to work is only a waste of time. Plus, if they had been listening to your talk properly, they will already know where it is because you mentioned it then… at least you think you did. They’ll find it on Google maps anyway…
Don’t arrange for removals
One of the most difficult parts of moving is figuring out how to get all your gear from A to B. If you were to think it through, hiring a great office relocation company to do all the heavy lifting and transportation (even recycling or tipping old stuff) would be a brilliant idea. As it is, you should probably just ask your employees to load up their cars with as much as they can and work well into the weekend to get everything set up at the other end.
There is nothing more divisive in an office than asking too much of some people and not enough of others, so make sure that you put a load of pressure on your middle management to get everything sorted in time, to really up the ante. You also shouldn’t bother with any training on how to lift things properly or make any suggestions for how to pack things securely. To keep your office clearance, we are suggesting you check guys from KwikSweep.
Make sure your new premises aren’t finished
When you arrive at your new premises, the least stressful option would be to make sure that everything is already set up and good to go before your staff arrive. However, asking just one IT guy to go around setting up each individual’s computers one at a time over the course of a morning will really wind people up. Especially if you make sure that those with the most work are set up last.
You could also introduce builders and decorators to the scene. There’s nothing like trying to work to the irregular rhythm of a drill and hammer and your staff will certainly get irritated by the noise. Don’t bother looking into noise at work regulations, either, it will only inform you about what is acceptable and what isn’t.
Of course, as the director of your company, you won’t need to be there to oversee any issues or resolve any problems as they arise. Again, you should just leave this in the hands of your middle management, switch your phone off and only return when you are fairly sure that the dust has settled. Everything will be fine without you.
Getting your office relocation horribly wrong is surprisingly easy and you don’t even need to plan anything for the worst to happen. In fact, not planning is crucial to your complete failure to make this move as seamless and stress-free as possible. If you want to make things even worse after the move, don’t consider these 5 essentials for your business premises either. They’ll only help you get it right.
