Relocating your office is a costly process for an organization, more due to the loss of your labor force efficiency due to the additional downtime over the actual physical cost of moving. In order to limit the cost of your employee downtime, there are several things that your organization can do:
- Require staff to use their PTO Time: Let’s face it, anytime you move there will be a major downtime for your office. Once all of your things are moved, time is taken by employees to transfer everything and reset up all of your files and computer workstations. It is more efficient to do so all at once with professional movers and have your IT department set everyone up while they are using up their PTO time. Some offices can’t limit downtime, so they just let the staff use up their downtime.
- Take Work Home: A lot of employees can work from home so saving projects that can be done from home is an important way to plan ahead for moving.
- Provide offsite training: Having employees train during the downtime associated with an office relocation is a good way to keep employees occupied on an essential task, without getting in the way of an office move. Conduct offsite training while your office relocation is going on to save downtime.
- Be Prepared: Having your office move properly laid out and designed to avoid maximum disruption is one way to limit the downtime that your office can face due to the move. Have files transferred and ready to go in anticipation of the move.
- Prepare Staff: Explaining to staff members how the relocation will go on is a good way to limit downtime during the move. Draw flowcharts to explain the process so staff members are ready to go.
- Hire IT Specialists: One of the big constraints when you move is the limited amount of time your IT staff has to work with workers. By hiring a consultant firm of specialists to aide in the process, you can save time and limit the downtime of workers.
- Choose a Slow Season: It may sound obvious, but by choosing a slow part of the year, you can ensure that your productivity is not significantly hurt by the office relocation.
An office move can result in serious downtime for your company. There are plenty of ways to make sure your company doesn’t suffer from extreme downtime – share these different ways with us on Facebook and Twitter.
