Moving Office? Top Tips on Maintaining Business Productivity
Moving Office? Top Tips on Staying Productive
All office moves present the opportunity for disruption and business downtime - and remember in business that time is money (or perhaps more relevantly lost time is lost money!)
This article offers some top tips on how best to ensure that you can maintain productivity during the entire office relocation process.
- Start Planning Early
You can never start the planning of your office move early enough. You should leave nothing to chance - so the sooner you start the planning & preparation of your office move the greater the chance of a successful outcome.
Try to plan your office move over a weekend - as this will give you extra time to install, test and fix any technology issues that crop up. If you are going to experience any technical issues you want them to happen on a Saturday or Sunday (which clearly minimizes any negative impact on staff and customers).
Remember that you want everything up and running for the Monday morning.
- Business Communications Infrastructure
Moving IT and Telecoms equipment can be the most complex and challenging part of any office move. So much of your business relies on the connectivity of your computers, phones and servers that you simply cannot afford to neglect this aspect of your office relocation.
Check, double-check and then re-check that you have connectivity of both the internet and your phone systems in your new office. It is business critical that your IT equipment and phone systems work as soon as they are plugged in at your new office.
Make sure that you give your providers of these services bucket-loads of notice to ensure that the switchover is completed in advance of your office move date. Where possible, you should test your Internet Access and Phone Lines (remember to test call out and call in) at your new office a few days before the move.
- Anticipate Downtime & Plan Accordingly
A well organized office relocation will anticipate IT downtime even if none is expected. Delays happen and unforeseen issues do arise. Make certain that you've got IT Support Staff at your new office location so they can trouble-shoot any issues.
If you don't have the necessary personnel (or skill-set) in-house then be sure to work with an IT Relocation Company to assist you. Make sure that your staff have their Laptops and/or tablets with them so that, if there are issues which delay their ability to work from your new office, they can still be productive.
- Communicate the Plan
You must let all your staff members know precisely what's required of them. Any confusion will result in lost productivity so come up with a clear schedule of what they need to do and when they need to do it. This should include the times and dates for them packing away their personal belongings.
Make sure they also know when you expect your employees to be away from the office (so your Office Moving Company can start the packing) but also let them know what time you expect them to arrive at work on the first day in your new office.
- Make Things Easy for Your Office Moving Company
Labeling is the key to ensuring that everything ends up in the right place. Labels are what tells your office movers what goes where. Every box and crate needs to be clearly labelled with both its contents and destination location (ie Files - Office Manager's Office).
You should also make available the floor plan of your new office to your moving company. This ensures that all boxes, crates, desks, chairs, filing cabinets, copier facilities etc end up in their right home.
- Identify Security Risks
Your business will, no doubt, have sensitive documents that will require special attention (sensitive documents, personnel records, bank details, high value items, contents of your safe etc). Identify a manager and make these items their personal responsibility and ensure that they are transported to your new office separately.
- IT Relocation Checklist
Your office move depends on IT & Telecoms are the lifeblood of any company. If your systems aren't working and your phones aren't ringing in your new office then you can't operate. It cannot be overstated that getting this aspect of your office move wrong (i.e. delays and downtime) can have dire operational and financial consequences for your business.
Experience shows that (i) you can never start the process early enough and (ii) the lead times are often longer than many companies imagine.
Avoid mistakes and eliminate risk by using the FREE IT Relocation Checklist.
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