We have moved to a new office on 1st of February, 2013. Physical distance between both new and old office was not that much and I thought it would be real simple to move to our new office. But boy, I was wrong. It takes lots of planning, co-ordination and efforts to get your office shifting right.
This post is to help you prepare a good checklist for your office shifting. There may be lots of factors and process that could be specific for your need, other may not be relevant, but I am going to talk about the most common process.
Schedule a date for Office Shifting
You should assign a deadline for shifting. Having a deadline for moving your office is going to help you speedup the rest of the process. There re so many task that must be addressed and if you don’t set a deadline for final shifting, it will be hard. So fix a date of shifting and the date of inaugurating your new office.
Is your new office operation ready?
Depending on the nature of business, you may require different kind of facilities. For example in ours case, we were setting up a new office. So right from furniture to electric works, networking to broadband connection, we had to ensure everything is in place before moving to this new office.
Different task require different consultants and experts. So before you start moving you have to ensure your new office is actually operation ready. Some of the basic requirements could be furniture, electricity, Internet connection, UPS and other backup devices, drinking water etc.
Announce your new address and update your partners
Once you know you are shifting your office, it’s always a good idea to start announcing this information. Keep your prospects, partners, associates informed that you will be moving your office and that there could be some delays in responding to ay communication or it could interrupt your services for a day or two.
Initiate the process to change your address on various official communications so that by the time you move to your new office, your official address is updated and no communication is missed.
Find Professional Packers and Movers for Office Shifting
In an office there could be different types of materials and packers and movers companies can help you shift them properly to your new office. You may also like to do the shifting by yourself, but nothing like getting a professional hired for helping your out with your office shifting.
To begin with, you may start by searching ‘packers and movers for office shifting’ on google and then talk to a few of the movers and packers companies who have expertise in office shifting.
Talk to three or four packers and movers, discuss your requirements and ask for quotations so that you can compare and then hire one of the office movers based on your evaluations.
Tips: How to hire best Packers and Movers on the Internet
Packing for office shifting
Usually in an office, there are hundreds types of documents, letters, invitations etc. Some of them could be very important and hope you have already filled them. Other may not be relevant, or less important and might be lying somewhere on your desk or in cabinets. Before you start packing, make sure to destroy such letters and papers.
No one likes to carry garbage and this is a good opportunity to get everything cleaned. Get rid of useless items. Involve your employees and ask them to separate important files and documents by themselves so that nothing goes missing.
At the time of packing your office goods, try to pack them departments wise or desk wise so that you can easily locate these items at the time of unpacking. You should also label them properly to save time while unpacking them in your new office.
Unpacking and re-arranging
Unpacking all those materials is going to take time. You may face small little issues here and there in locating your stuff, but that’s okay. Prepare yourself accordingly.
To Conclude, as I said above, I am still not well settled in my new office, so stay tuned and I am going to write a very detailed post on office shifting by this weekend.
