Relocating your office is a lot of work. From finding a new space to packing up everything in your office, it’s important to make sure that your business continues to run seamlessly throughout the entire moving process.
How to Prepare for an Office Move
Moving should never begin on “moving day”. Instead, you should treat moving an office as a multi-stage process that begins well before your move date.
Develop an Office Relocation Timeline
Developing a timeline will help your office staff – and everyone else involved in the move – stay on the same page. When creating your timeline, keep the following things in mind:
Preparing staff for an office move
It’s important to give your employees adequate notice before starting the moving process. Preparing staff for an office move will give them time to plan in advance for their new work commute. Moving offices could potentially add or reduce their commute time, which could potentially affect their child care or other arrangements.
Schedule around important company dates
You don’t want to be moving an office on the same day as an important conference call or major meeting with international clients, right? Make sure that you pick a date that doesn’t disrupt the day-to-day functions of your company.
Consider your lease
To keep costs down and avoid overlapping rent payments, try to choose a date that gives you enough time to get everything moved and to get your former office space properly emptied and cleaned out.
Notify your landlord
All leases are different. Always check your current lease before selecting a move date to ensure you will have enough time to notify your landlord that you will not be renewing your current lease.
Make sure that every employee and supplier your company deals with is aware of the move. Even before you select a date, it’s a good thing to start putting it out there that the company will be moving locations. It is possible that some employees will have to look for a new job if they feel they won’t or can’t commute to the new office location. To avoid any potential issues with employees, try to give them enough time to work out their personal details, if necessary.
Visit the New Office Space
Visiting the new office prior to your move will help you avoid potential problems by addressing and fixing them first.
Painting
If you want to paint your new space, hire professional painters. Although painting can sound like a good idea at the time, it often turns into a much larger undertaking than you originally anticipated.
Take measurements
More likely than not, your new office space won’t be exactly like your old one. To avoid having issues moving furniture and other large items into the new office on moving day, take and record measurements of doorways and each individual room within the new space.
Make a list of needed repairs
If your new space requires repairs, it’s important to make a list of broken or damaged areas to give to your new landlord before you move in. However, if you are making alterations to the space that require hiring contractors, start lining them up now. Office alterations can be loud and incredibly messy. The last thing you want is a bunch of incomplete projects in your new space on moving day.
Update Your Business Address
A company move is a lot like a personal move in that your address needs to be updated in about a million different places. Below are some of the most important sites and entities that you’ll need to update your business address with to avoid any problems.
Google My Business
Make sure customers can still find you! Before moving day, it’s important to update your address through Google My Business. If you don’t already have an account with Google My Business, we strongly recommend signing up for one. Google My Business is a great way to stay engaged with your customers, share company updates and blogs, photos and customer reviews.
United States Postal Service
Updating your address with the US Post Office will make sure that all your business mail is forwarded to the proper address. Forwarding will continue for one year, giving you enough time to manually update any senders who don’t automatically receive an address update from the post office.
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