Office Shifting Checklist: New Space Optics
It shouldn’t be a surprise that this topic is on our office shifting checklist. This is because everyone shifting has to make sure that the space where they are moving to is ready to go, so that their business continues on strong.
So, what tasks should you include in this area of your checklist?
There are a millions reasons why an office could be shifting another place, and every business has its own objectives. So the tasks needed to make the new space ready for business will be different on every office shifting checklist.
We are tried to take this into consideration when making a list of tasks for this section of the checklist. Here are the things we consider the most important list:
- Determining the new office headcount
- Determine the new office layout
- Desks needed
- Common areas
- Equipment
- Organization of different departments in the building
- Style/brand of the office
- Inventory usable furniture from old office
- Purchase new furniture if needed
This is a pretty general list, but it is a good starting point for leaders looking to develop their own office shifting checklist.
Office Shifting Checklist: Technology
The most complicated of all of the sections on our office shifting checklist is technology, which is one of the most important relocation issues.
Why?
Data is sacred. Losing data or even having a security breach could have huge impacts for your business. So, it is important that your leadership team, and your technology side of the house is completely prepared for the relocation.
We aren’t tech experts, but it is pretty simple to understand what goes into relocating an office from a technology perspective.
- Complete an assessment of the entire IT infrastructure at the original office
- Equipment
- Power sources
- Cabling
- Servers
- Backup any important files or data before the relocation
- Develop a plan for the new office location
- What equipment do we need?
- Power sources?
- Cabling?
- Servers?
Here is an office relocation checklist specifically for IT professionals that provides more detail.
Office Shifting Checklist: Business Operations
Business operations refers to the people and the processes involved with leading the move. This part of the office shifting checklist mostly pertains to the high level executives at your organization, as well as the HR and organizational development teams tasked with conducting the move.
Related More topic: House Shifting Checklist before moving day
Here are the most important tasks to include on your checklist in this area:
- Appoint a relocation committee
- Set a timeline for committee members and executives to individually relocate to the new location
- Develop a timeline of the relocation
- Create a new seating and layout chart
- Create a protocol for moving confidential and important data, equipment, etc
Office Shifting Checklist: Old Space Management
- Have you ever leased an apartment and had to inventory the damages to the space after moving out?
- Well, in this section we basically go over how to do this exact process, except for an office space.
Here are the things you need to do to close up shop in your old space:
- Identify and inventory the old space
- Damages
- Furniture
- Electricity
- Cables
- Cancel services like utilities, electricity, internet, etc
- Remove company signage and branding
- Hire and schedule a cleaning services
- Return building keys, passwords, etc to the landlord or new owner
Office Shifting Checklist: Communication
This area of the office relocation checklist is all about communicating your big move to various stakeholders of the organization.
While it is important to communicate the transition to everyone, it should be noted that not every stakeholder should be treated the same way. For example, how you communicate to employees about the office shifting should be very different than how you let the press know about your move.
Here are our tasks for this section of the office shifting checklist:
- Internal announcement to employees
- Relocation letters to impacted employees
- Layoff letters to impacted employees
- External announcement to vendors, clients, government, and press
- Send out instructions to impacted stakeholders about the moving timeline
- Update company information wherever it is listed with new information
