The hardest part of an office relocation process is to communicate your move to your staff and managing them through the move. You cannot deny the importance of employees’ role in the success of the business relocation. Even if you do not involve your employees in the overall moving process, they are supposed to sort and pack their own desks, office equipment, documents, and personal belongings.
Create a Good Communication Strategy
Business relocation affects each employee on many levels so a poorly managed relocation process can increase downtime, lead to employee dissatisfaction, and thus decreased employee productivity. Communicating your move effectively to your employees will enable you to plan the move well and that will reduce the employee stress and negative effects of moving your business. Making a business relocation plan includes many tasks from researching state to state moving companies to packing to transporting your office appliances. Here we present a few steps that you can take to manage your employees during your office relocation process.
Build a Moving Team
An office move is teamwork and needs the participation of as many employees as possible. You can choose some of your employees and assign them different moving tasks. Make sure you recruit heads of various departments of your office including information technology, human resources, transportation, facilities, and marketing, etc. The involvement of team leaders of these departments will ensure the participation of all their team members. Team leaders are often trusted by their teams and communicating with them will enable you to know the view of all your employees about the move.
Be a Good Leader
Make sure you become constant support to your employees during the entire moving process. To earn their trust, make sure you communicate your move to your employees at the earliest. Make sure they do not get to know about the move from any outside sources as this will diminish their trust in you. Be a source of inspiration for them by staying calm during the whole process. If you will get anxious with all the moving-related details, it makes sense if your employees get anxious too.
Deliver the News in a Proper Way
Make sure to break the news of relocation properly and use the same mode of communication that you generally use in your company to exchange information. Sending emails, holding conference meetings, and calling in-person meetings are some of the common methods of exchanging information in companies. Make sure you deliver complete information so that employees know what they should expect and when. The key points that should be delivered may include a clear timeline of the moving process, detailed instructions on packing their desks/cubicles, who to approach for packing material, and the packing deadlines.
Communicate All Work-Related Plans
Make sure you convey to your staff well about the work schedule and workload during the move. The office hours are often changed and/or extended while packing office stuff and equipment so it makes sense to let your employees know about these changes well in advance. Like you, your employees too might be excited about the new workspace, show them your new office plan. Consider discussing your new office layout, look, and set-up during official meetings or breaks. Also, provide your staff enough information about the possible ways of transportation to your new office as this will be one of the major concerns of employees. Let them know about the routes, parking, and modes of transportation for your new office. It is wise to deliver these messages well to make your employee feel a part of the organization. They will feel that their commute problem is their responsibility alone.
Involve Each Employee in the Process
You can involve each employee in the moving process by taking few simple steps. Firstly, you can ask for their views on the design and layout of your existing office and what changes they expect at your new location. Ask them to provide creative ideas to design your new office and in naming your new conference and meeting rooms. Also, make sure to involve them in creating a new office look. You can even ask them for moving company references. They may suggest to you some reputable professional moving companies and this will save both your time and energy. You can assign move-related tasks to different teams, for instance, the human resources team can be responsible for handling all office documents and equipment while the transportation team can handle the movers on the moving day and information technology employees should be responsible for uninstallation and re-installation of office electronic gadgets and other peripherals.
Update Employees
You should consider sending timely reminders to your employees about the upcoming move at regular intervals and frequently once the move comes nearer. You can include some important key points in these messages like updating their contact information to apply for new office passes and packing up their office desk within time.
Make sure you let stay easy on your staff after the move while they adapt to the changed location and work environment.
