Preparing for an office move can be stressful—not only do you have to sort out the logistics of the actual move, but you need to anticipate how the layout of your future space will affect employees’ productivity and overall workplace culture.
While this may prove challenging, there are ways you can streamline the process with proper planning. With innovative technology, facility managers can find proactive solutions to eliminate some of the most common office move problems. Here are three major move management issues and tips on how to avoid them.
During a move, it is easy to lose track of company resources. As you move equipment from one site to another, you and your staff may be unclear about which resources are available to you—information like how many monitors you have or who is currently borrowing a loaner laptop can fall through the cracks. Failing to keep track of every piece of equipment and furniture can result in lost resources, extra costs and many headaches for you and your staff. Managing physical assets is an important part of the move, and knowing where your resources are at all times will make the move process much easier.
A resource tracking tool can help eliminate the stress and confusion that comes with an office move. By keeping tabs on important resources, you can ensure your move is both cost efficient and transparent—your employees won’t have to guess where to find equipment in the new office. A good resource tracking system allows you to track anything from copiers and tables to company-owned artwork and fire safety equipment. It should also allow you to visualize your office layout and tag specific resources to rooms or people so that you can easily manage inventory.
Mistakes in creating office layouts happen more often than you may think. From forgetting about assigning an employee to a workstation, to incorrect space measurements to last-minute changes from senior management, being proactively organized from the start of your new office design process is absolutely essential. You don’t want to end up placing two departments who work closely together on opposite ends of the office—your office design should optimize efficiency and productivity.
Seeing an accurate floor plan and having the ability to make changes or roll out scenario planning in real-time, with an accurate staff directory, is critical to the design process.
Your space should reflect the flow of tasks and teams in a typical workday.
With a user-friendly space management tool, you can stay organized as you strategize and draft multiple layout scenarios. By tracking and managing your entire space in one system, you can make intelligent allocation choices that benefit your entire team. With easy drag-and-drop move capabilities, you can even adjust your plan to accommodate last minute requests.
Communication breakdowns during an office move are common—managers may be stressed and forget to tell their employees about impending changes, or an email may contain incorrect information. As facility manager, you need to ensure accurate information is distributed to the correct staff at the appropriate time. Many departments may also take an office move as an opportunity to request new resources or desk allocations, and it can be difficult for a facility manager to address all of these in a timely manner throughout the process.
Maintain a constant, consistent communication plan for all stages of the office move with the help of automated updates and notifications. With move management tools, you can create schedules and automatically notify the appropriate departments via email. This allows for better move tracking, and ensures that all employees are on the same page. With request management tools that offer built-in reporting features, you can provide clarity and transparency to facility requests so that team members are informed of any progress in real-time.
Moving offices can be complicated and stressful, but with the proper tools it doesn’t have to be. By trading primitive tools for a single, dedicated platform, facility managers can stop wasting time manually managing seat allocations, tracking resources and answering requests. With automated features designed to provide offices with better transparency and efficiency, facility managers can ensure that their next move is a seamless one.
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