Needing to move offices is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because, hopefully, the move is because the company is growing and becoming more profitable. It’s a curse because moving offices is the worst. There’s no end to the furniture, equipment, and supplies to pack up and move quickly and efficiently. Packing and moving an 800 sq. ft. apartment is easy and doable in a day. Doing the same thing for a 20,000 sq. ft. office is impossible. Moving is awful no matter how you look at it, but it must be done.
Moving Takes Forever
Let’s face it—moving offices takes forever. It is a multistep process that will take several weeks to complete. To minimize the impact on operations, moving takes place in stages, starting with what the office can do without and escalating up to employees and their effects. Packing desks and realizing that people are hoarders who refuse to throw anything out will add days to the move and take years off your life.
The Stress Is Huge
Moving offices is the worst because of the mountain of stress that builds up. If a normal day at the office is a 5 on the stress scale, moving is a 10 without question. Trying to organize everything and everyone, coordinating movers, bringing in cleaners, all while trying to conduct actual business is stressful. You can try to minimize the stress, but that would challenge Tony Robbins himself.
Lost Productivity
Even if the move comes off without a hitch and nothing is lost, there will be lost productivity. It’s a fact of the business move. At some point, the desks, phones, and computers will be on a truck and work will stop. Some work-a-holics will find a way to get things done via cellphone and laptop, but the majority will take advantage of the confusion as long as possible and enjoy the break.
Where Is Everything?
Try as you may, things will get lost or misplaced. Label, organize, and divvy up the new space into zones all day long, but the accounting team will still ask where the calculators went. There’s also the lunch-place phenomenon. When people get into a new office space, they want to explore and find out where the best lunch places are. It’s a thing, and they want to explore the new building and surroundings, so plan on more lost productivity during the transition.
