Moving House Can Be Tough - But What About Moving Offices?

Most of us have dealt with the dread of moving house at one point or another. We label this dread because while the new wonder of a new home and refreshed chapter in life can be wonderful, it’s a huge administrative and physical effort to pack and move everything, and as such, the fear of the unknown can make that a little more stressful. Luckily, it’s surmountable, and when it’s done, it’s done.

If moving house is known to be a little turbulent, then, how much more intensive is moving your entire office or business premises to another location? After all, here you’re not only dealing with inventory and assets but people and their careers. North American Van Lines can help with the former, but no removalist service can help with the latter. You may be struggling with this question as your own business looks to expand to a larger building, or you may even hope to own commercial real estate.

In this post, we’ll discuss some essential principles that can smooth out this process, helping you cultivate the best forward approach:

Moving Department By Department

It’s unlikely that you’re going to close down your business for a month to move every service and provision to the new location, and so moving department by department, step by step, can be the best way to keep the service running. Thankfully, with remote work this is more than possible. Setting up the office for your HR department to move first, then perhaps your marketing division, and then other integral facilities will help you sustain the offices, help them settle in, and then welcome a new wave of professionals. Over the course of a few months you can easily bring along infrastructure and labor without a major pause in your operations.

Using Temporary Portable Offices

It’s also worthwhile to utilize temporary portable offices to the extent that you can. These are freestanding shelters that can be rented and delivered outside of the new premises. They will offer access to electricity, a desk layout to keep a department together, and some facilities such as a staff kitchen while your new building is finished. This way, you can more easily enroll your department back into their workflow as their IT systems are set up in the new offices. It can also give you an alternative if you have to vacate your current offices sooner than you imagine.

Infrastructure First

Make sure to have your infrastructure in place before you bring people. A whole building worth of people using one bathroom that has been completed is not good enough. It’s also important to make sure the staff kitchen and lockers are usable, that the bike racks or smoking shelter is fully usable, and that the IT networks and WiFi are ready to be used. This way, you can bring in departments without having them run as a skeleton crew, or with outdated or dysfunctional utilities and tools. This way, you shouldn’t inconvenience your staff any more than you have deemed acceptable for the move.

With this advice, you’re sure to move offices in the most logistically sound and convenient manner.