Either your department is growing and no longer fit into the current premises or the office rent is rising up – these are just two of the reasons people usually think about changing their office space. Finding a new office takes some time, but let’s fast forward to the moment when you have already chosen one and signed a contract. What to do next?
Start planning your move
Moving an entire office is not an easy task, as you need to decide on the date of the move, change addresses and think about how exactly to move the office furniture and supplies.
In addition, you may encounter a situation where the layout of your new office does not match the old one. For example, the recreation area already has furniture, and a kitchen cabinet or a refrigerator from an old office may not fit. To ensure that your move to the office goes smoothly, you can hire local movers Calgary to help you with the transportation of bulky items, office equipment, as well as with their arrangement in a new place.
In any case, it is worth starting planning at least six months before the move. Notify all employees that you will be changing offices and assign a team responsible for the move – this way everyone will understand what is happening, and it will be easier for you to do your part of the work.
Make a to-do list
Before you delegate any work, you should imagine its volume. So, in order for your office relocation to be successful, it is worth to:
- make inventory;
- get rid of unnecessary, broken, non-working or obsolete pieces of furniture and appliances;
- take care of data security;
- make sure your address is up to date;
- transfer services (telephone, Internet) to a new location and plan jobs in another room;
- purchase items for packaging and new furniture if necessary;
- pack up in the old office and wait for moving day.
An inventory will help you understand how much equipment, chairs, cabinets, document folders, etc. you currently have, and in the future you can refer to this list to know for sure that your new office arrangement does not miss anything, and that nothing was lost during the move. This is also a great time to gather your courage and throw away excess furniture.
To save your data, make a backup and try to copy some of the data to the cloud storage or to another hard drive. You can also convert paper documents to digital form to facilitate moving fees.
Warn your partners and customers in advance that you will have a new physical address, and also update the information on all sites where it is possible. You can also make an information banner that you are moving to a new place. Make sure that in the new place you have electricity, water, Internet, telephone service connected, and arrange cleaning and security services.
You can start moving things even before the planned move date – start with things that are not too important or not essential. Develop a tag system and have each employee assemble their workspace to increase collection efficiency. Separately fold and label the cables to the equipment so that it is easier and faster to connect the equipment in a new place.
What to do the day before moving
Make sure everyone turns in the keys and access cards from the old office. You can shorten your employees’ work day by a few hours so that they can pack the rest of their belongings. It is also worth doing a general cleaning in the old office.
On the day of the move, one or two employees should coordinate the move: show the movers the way, tell them the order of loading things, give a tip to movers if you decide to do so. After loading all the boxes and furniture, check if you have forgotten any of the documents and things in the current (now vacant) office, then you can hand over the keys to the owner and fix the end of the lease.
After you’ve set up your new office, connected all the computers and made sure that all the important data is in place, it’s worth throwing a little party, as the move took a lot of nerves, and everyone deserves a little break and celebrate it.