Your employees are at the heart of your company and without them, moving to a new office likely wouldn’t be possible. You value your employees, of course, but it’s important to also consider how relocating impacts them. After all, your business’ current location is where they spend the majority of their days; a place that has become like a second home to them. Relocating means that their work environment and entire routine is going to change. Perhaps they’ll have to navigate through more traffic in the morning or will arrive home later than expected, or maybe they have created a cubicle that feels like a piece of home to them. Needless to say, relocating is stressful for your employees too. It’s important to take the proper steps to help them prepare for this big move, so that together, as a team, you can all move forward towards the same goal.
Provide Your Employees with Weekly Updates
Relocating is exciting, but it’s also nerve-racking. Your employees may experience increased anxiety or stress as the move fast approaches. They’re essentially uprooting their 8-hours a day and spending it in a location that they aren’t familiar with – and that can be intimidating.
To ease the stress for employees, help them trade in the anxiety for excitement. Provide weekly updates via newsletters or meetings; share progress photos; provide a list of local amenities your employees can enjoy on their lunch breaks; emphasize how close the new location is to public transit and highlight the benefits of relocating.
Assign a Go-To Person to Answer All Questions and Concerns
It’s important to ensure that all of your employees’ questions and concerns get answered leading up to the office relocation. However, you have plenty on your plate and will likely be unable to respond to their inquiries in a timely manner, which may increase their stress and anxiety.
So, assign a trusted employee the task of addressing these questions and concerns. The key is to choose someone who is highly involved with the relocation to ensure that they’ll be able to respond to your employees with accurate information in a timely manner.
Inform Your Employees of Any Changes – Good and Bad
As a business owner, one of the most difficult things you have to do is relay all types of information to others, some of which isn’t always good news. However, it’s highly recommended to keep your employees up to date with any changes that will directly (or indirectly) affect them, such as lack of parking, longer commute times, a smaller kitchen, having to update their access cards, etc.
Chances are, your employees will be frustrated by changes that aren’t ideal. Fortunately, you can balance the effect by emphasizing the benefits that come with each change, such as offering public transportation passes for all employees to use to go to and from work, free lunches on Friday, or another type of incentive.
Cover the Fine Details
Relocating has many fine details involved. It isn’t just moving large desks and chairs. Instead, it’s moving thousands of pens, notepads, personal belongings, files, etc. Relocating is time-consuming and tedious, and you’ll want to provide your employees with more than enough free-time and information to prepare their workspace for the move.
You’ll also want to inform your employees of any changes that will occur to their workspace. For example, if your employees are used to having assigned cubicles that they can decorate with their own belongings but will now work at any desk they find available, or if they’re used to having a full kitchen but will now only have a mini-fridge and microwave, these are things they should know prior to moving day.
The most important thing to do is to keep your employees informed, updated and excited about the move by highlighting the advantages of switching locations. As for trading your stress in for excitement, leave it up to BMS Moving & Storage. We handle all of the logistics, so you can sit back and enjoy the benefits of relocating your business.
