You hire movers, pay them their fee, pack and unpack your office stuff, and you’re done, right? Not so fast. Moving your office to a new location is a complex operation, and there are many additional costs that will increase how much money you need to budget for your office relocation. Here are six costs that you need to plan for.
Your boxes and furniture need to get from one office to the other, and that requires loading it into the freight elevator. Your building’s landlord will charge you for use of the freight elevator, often after hours. After hours freight elevator use can cost upwards of $200 an hour.
These may seem like an afterthought, but office decorations are big business, and they are important parts of a complete office. Even the most minimalist aesthetic is going to require wall art, which can start around $50 for posters and go up from there. Potted plants will also cost money.
Getting your cable and internet turned on when your family moves is a challenge in and of itself. The IT needs of a business are much greater and more involved. Tasks like expanding wiring if necessary for internet and phone, setting up the phone network, setting up the internet and internal network, setting up networked devices like printers, copiers, local servers, and fax machines, and more. IT setup costs can vary from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars depending on the size of the office.
When your office moves, so does your office address, and that means updating the address everywhere. Most commonly, this means buying new business cards, stationery, print collateral, and promotional swag like pens and mugs. It also means updating the address on your website, digital collateral (case studies, white papers, ebooks, etc), online ads, and third party websites.
Office furniture is large, expensive, and a challenge to move. In many cases, it is less expensive to buy new entirely new office furniture than it is to move old furniture. Especially if your office is expanding, this can dramatically increase the cost of the move. And it’s not just desks and chairs, but things like water coolers and microwaves as well.
This is a cost that most completely overlook. Employee time spent preparing for the move, doing work related to the move, and working at reduced efficiency because of the move can represent the largest hidden cost of an office move. Every hour that employees are using that could be spent profitably adds to the cost. This is one reason that it is vital to conduct the move as efficiently as possible and why it can make sense to hire an outside transition consultant to streamline and oversee the process.
Office relocation can be both an exciting and stressful time for a business; however, there is much more that goes into relocating your office than appears at first glance, and it is important to allocate enough resources to ensure the process goes smoothly.
