Office Relocations Are More Disruptive Than You Think
Moving offices is a popular trend for many businesses. In fact, 9% of companies have been relocating to more advantageous locations in 2022. Southern states like Florida are appealing for a variety of reasons, including costs, tax benefits, and climate. But underneath the benefits, an office move also comes with a number of challenges ot consider. In fact, if you fail to plan properly, the move could damage your business in ways that can’t be repaired.
Slow Productivity
It’s hard to maintain a normal workflow during an office move. Employees may temporarily lose access to equipment, workstations, documents, or even meeting rooms. Ultimately, even a small disruption can affect your internal and external communications. This means that both your teams and your customers may notice the difference. If your operations rely on collaboration and regular exchanges, work may get slow during the move. While this is only temporary, the productivity dip during a move can last several weeks or even months!
Tech Problems
Your business needs to arrange for tech setup from scratch again, which can become a source of stress in a new location. Ultimately, it can take time to get back to the way your tech was connected and linked. This means that Internet installation may take some days to be established. Phone system transfers tend to happen only once the new office location is fully equipped, which again means your team is not able to hit the ground running from day one. Even the server relocation can create coordination issues.
While these are not necessarily problematic, they can be frustrating for your team. So ideally, when planning a move, you want to consider a at-home transition period until you can get the new office tech-ready.
Storage and Logistics
Office relocations rarely happen neatly. More often than not, items may arrive at different times and in different boxes. One day, the desks and chairs may be delivered, and you might find yourself waiting for the rest of the equipment to arrive before you can install the new office.
Even when everything is delivered simultaneously, being packed in different boxes means there will be serious delays in unpacking and installing everything again. When you are working with a small office space, this may be a matter of a few days. But in large office environments, businesses could be looking at weeks of delays, even though everything has arrived already.
That’s why more and more businesses are looking for flexible, short-term storage solutions during the transition period, such as using moving storage services that securely store all your office equipment and furniture to coordinate phased setups.
Employee Communication
Office moves can create anxiety for employees, especially when communication is limited. Staff members may worry about workspace changes and commute changes. Ultimately, many employees choose where they live based partly on how long it takes them to travel to work each day. So, a new office location can affect their commuting time and overall work-life balance. Ideally, business location should be discussed early on with your existing employees, so that solutions can be found to keep valuable team members.
A poorly managed office move can leave your business behind, affecting your profits and reputation. This can be frustrating when the initial objective of a move is either growth or revenue, but that’s where preparedness is essential.
