Relocating your business is stressful. You and your employees will find yourselves busier with packing than actual work. You can lose a bit of revenue or maybe even customers. But most of all, the costs of moving can rise for reasons outside your control.
One of the biggest cost drivers of moving is the amount of stuff you’d pack and haul. The heavier the load of the mover’s cargo, the more expensive the fees will be. Certain arduous tasks, like going up the stairs while carrying heavy boxes, may also cost extra. So days or weeks before your move, consider using this checklist and minimize the time and money you’d spend.
1. Declutter Your Office
Ideally, you should’ve already decluttered months before your move. But in reality, not many offices devote time for decluttering. They realize one day that their space is already overwhelmed.
To avoid packing and bringing unnecessary stuff to the move, make an inventory of all office supplies and equipment. Then sort out what you need and don’t need. Assign a team for handling the unwanted items and another team for handling the items to be packed.
But sorting out the items alone can already be overwhelming. If you’re dealing with ten years’ worth of things, for example, you may have now lost touch with what you use and don’t use. So don’t try to finish the task in one day. Instead, stretch the task into a week, at least. Jot down the office supplies and equipment you normally use every day. Any barely used item that’s just increasing your costs and wasting space can go.
2. Clean and Organize
You can hire professional cleaners to handle the aftermath of your decluttering. But employees should be responsible for their own workstations. This can prolong the delay in productivity since everyone has to devote their whole day to cleaning. But you and your team can focus more on the move if you can set work aside.
That’s why it’s crucial to follow an organized checklist or to-do list. No one would be all over the place that way, cleaning one moment then entertaining a client next. Accept the move as your priority, and worry about your revenue after settling in your new location.
3. Decide What to Do with Unwanted Items
Now that you’ve packed the necessities and grouped the unwanted items decide where the latter would go. You can donate them to public facilities or sell them to a recycling company. If you’ve kept some items “just in case,” consider moving them into temporary storage. A local moving company usually offers those. You can rent out an ample storage space for a time until you’ve decided what to do with the items.
4. Reduce Your Office Equipment
Reducing office equipment is an effective way to decrease your operational expenses. It’ll benefit your company during and after the move. Not to mention reduce the burden off your movers. To determine which office equipment you can get rid of, go paperless. Digitalize whatever you can. Any file that can be viewed and signed online should no longer have physical copies unless necessary. Try to limit papers to legal documents only.
If you still traditional phone lines, consider switching to VoIP or Voice Over Internet Protocol. It’s a communication technology that depends on the internet instead of traditional phone lines. As such, you can make long-distance calls without raising your phone bills. You can also send voice messages to your clients’ or employees’ email addresses or SMS.
If you can, reduce your software costs as well. Work “in the cloud,” a service in which a third-party provider stores all your files. This can offer your company stronger cybersecurity for less.
With less equipment, you can save more time and money on your move. Your new space can have a better traffic flow, and you can easily install new workstations when your team grows.
5. Plan a Way to Prevent Accumulating Junk
Your new office will accumulate stuff in time and become a jungle, like your previous office. So plan a way to prevent that from happening. One of the simplest ways to do so is to stop accepting freebies from any source. Even if that’s your client or trusted supplier, politely reject any item they give you that won’t serve a purpose in your office.
Avoid buying more storage than you need because that encourages you to keep collecting stuff. Also, try to set a monthly or quarterly decluttering schedule. Treat your office like your home, which needs thorough re-organization now and then.
With this checklist, your office relocation can go on smoothly, and you can feel refreshed when you move into your new space. The lesser stuff there is to worry about, the quicker you can resume your business operations.