Moving is never a pleasant task, but poor planning can make things even worse. When it’s time to move your office, there are a lot of potential mistakes to be avoided. Although there is no way we can foresee all potential errors, we can still cover the most common ones. And so, let’s discuss ten common mistakes that you should avoid when moving your office.
1. Not Labeling Boxes Properly
When you move, you are basically compacting your entire office space into boxes. When it comes to unpacking time, a lack of organization can make it a lot more difficult than the packing step. If the boxes are not labeled, you will have to go through their contents at random. Needless to say, that is neither efficient nor fun. Every box should be labeled according to its place of origin and specific contents.
2. Bringing Useless Junk
Most offices will have some degree of useless junk lying around. This might include obsolete IT hardware, old office furniture, non-important records, etc. As long as you’re moving, you might as well take the opportunity to be rid of this crap. Besides, fewer goods to move will translate into fewer truckloads that have to be moved, and that will save you money.
3. Hiring Poor-Quality Movers
There are a lot of moving companies out there, and not all of them do the best job of vetting their employees. These people are likely to be hauling sensitive equipment that is very valuable to you. As such, you don’t want just anyone doing the job. One ill-fated drop can cost you a lot of money and aggravation, so be careful who you hire. Reviews and testimonials are a good place to start investigating although you should (obviously) avoid those that are presented by company itself. Such examples are cherry-picked and will not reflect reality.
4. Failing To Notify All Relevant Individuals
Before you change your office location, it is important to notify anyone that does business with you at that location. This might include customers, business partners, and companies with whom you collaborate. At the very least, a mass email with the new address should be sent to all the relevant people. Also, we would recommend notifying people at least one month in advance. This might or might not make a difference to your customers, but it’s a good courtesy nonetheless.
5. Not Making A Specific Enough Plan
When we say that you need to plan your move effectively, we mean that you need a detailed plan. Simply telling people to throw everything in the truck and unload it at a certain location isn’t good enough. Some people just aren’t self-motivated, and some others don’t have a capacity for good organization.
People need to know what they are supposed to do and when they are supposed to do so. The best thing to do is to make everyone responsible for packing and organizing a particular area. At the same time, you need to set out the order in which things will be packed, hauled, and unpacked. Needless to say, you want to move the largest and most important items first.
6. Only Getting One Kind Of Box
When you are buying a large number of moving boxes, you can often get a good deal by buying in bulk. This usually means that you will get a large number of virtually identical boxes. That isn’t really ideal because you will need to transport objects of many different shapes and sizes.
When you use a big box for small items, you end up with an unruly mess of stuff that will take forever to sort. Smaller boxes in which the goods are separated by category can be unpacked and re-organized with much less trouble. Thus, you want to get boxes that fit the scale of each individual job.
7. Not Padding The Boxes
Whenever you pack something sensitive/fragile for a move, it is important to employ some padding. This might be as simple as wrapping glass items in several layers of newspaper. However, bubble wrap or something of that sort is a little better. A newspaper will prevent items from banging together and shattering, but only to a certain point. Anything that could be ruined from too much jostling should be thoroughly padded. In fact, the best thing is to use enough padding to keep the items from moving at all.
8. Hiring Amateur Movers
Instead of hiring a professional moving company, you can almost always find some freelance moving work. There are always people looking for work, but they may not necessarily be the kind of people you want. Hiring a pro, on the other hand, allows you to be secure in the knowledge that your movers have been vetted at some point. That vetting won’t mean much if it was done by a substandard company, so it’s still important to choose the right one.
9. Not Taking Inventory
Things have a way of disappearing during a move, as it is easy for items to get “lost in the shuffle.” Of course, this is sometimes due to theft, but it’s usually just a matter of poor organization. You probably keep an inventory of all your office supplies, so it shouldn’t be a big deal to do a total inventory before moving.
10. Not Getting Moving Insurance
As you already know, it can be very easy for things to get lost or damaged when moving offices. Since your office probably contains important equipment and data, you want to minimize that risk as much as possible. Even the best and most experienced movers might drop or lose something from time to time. By taking out a relatively inexpensive mover’s insurance plan, you can make sure that any such losses are covered.
Conclusion
If you can avoid these ten mistakes, your move is likely to go off without a hitch. Obviously, there are other mistakes that can be made, but these are definitely the most common ones. At PCH Technologies, we don’t just specialize in the best tech solutions. We also offer office relocation services, including office relocation IT services. If you are interested in learning more about those options, please call (856) 754-7500.