Moving from office to office can prove tiring, lengthy and often tests your patience, especially if you have to do this more than once a year. But whether you’re moving locations or a job altogether, follow our ultimate guidelines to moving quickly and effectively in less than an hour and the dreaded office move needn’t be dreaded anymore. However tiring, an office move can be exciting. Change is always good, so embrace it.
So you may only have your own desk to worry about, if that’s the case, you’ve got it easy. If you’re managing a team or even a whole office, there are certain responsibilities you’ll need to take on board and deliver professionally. However complicated the move is looking to be, the key is to keep it simple and to plan ahead. The main ingredients to an office move include teamwork, boxes, cleaning, hired help, storage and transportation. Without considering these points and managing each one separately, the move will be more difficult than first hoped.
Allocate certain members of your team to manage areas that need moving. Start by divvying out tasks, therefore making it clear who needs to do what. From the de-cabling of wires to packing up the stationary cupboard, every detail needs to be noted and acted upon. You might consider hiring help if you’ve got a big office to move. Research the top office removal companies in your area and cut-it right down to the top three.
The first trick ultimately is to get yourself organised a week or a couple of days before you move, depending on the amount of goods you have to move. Start to throw out any clutter that you really don’t need or miss and recycle any paper or card that’s been hanging around for months. What’s more, if you’ve got double the amount of staplers or post-it notes, see who else needs them or donate them to the stationary cupboard.
Storage is the main basis to any move so make sure you’ve got plenty of it. To motivate your team to get packing, leave cardboard boxes by their desks and send round a calendar event for a time to clean and pack up the office. The end of a day will work better, give at least half an hour to let everybody do so.
As well as storage and packing-up, make sure all surfaces are cleaned. You might have hired an agency cleaner to do a proper job but it doesn’t hurt to clean up yourselves and make their lives a little easier. Tie this task in with the big office pack-up and get it all done in one go to avoid people slacking and trying sneak off home early.
In advance of your move, you may have planned how you’re going to move everything. It could be as simple as a couple of floors down, but if you’re moving to a brand new location and a new building completely, van hire will work out a lot cheaper than booking taxis. If people don’t have a lot of stuff, there’s always public transport. But it may be easier to box and tape up, label all the boxes with names and departments and group them according to teams.
All in all, from boxing, packing, storing, cleaning and moving, you should have conducted a smooth office removal by now. Make sure unpacking is conducted smoothly too and ensure everyone recycles their boxes as well as checking that certain people don’t leave them lying around to be tripped over. Moving should be quick, easy and ethical.
