Social Media Consultancy London

5 Tips to Help with an Office Relocation

It is said that moving is one of the most stressful things you can personally go through. The stress of moving home is among the most potent, while moving to a new office may be even more disconcerting. Unlike moving home, an office relocation takes extraordinary planning, military-like execution, and numerous associated tasks.

Without good timing, scheduling, deadliest and informing relevant personnel, you run the risk of adversely affecting your business. In addition, essential assets need to be secured, and a professional moving company is critical for insurance purposes.

Secure Digital and Physical Assets

Your office is likely to contain a multitude of valuable data assets both on paper and digitally. For example, bills, invoices and receipts may exist in paper form. At the same time, customer and client personal data is stored on hard disks. The information contained in these documents is valuable in the wrong hands, such as malicious hackers. Data like this is often sold on the black market, and therefore temporary storage space is required while you organize your new office location.

Organize with Military Precision

Speaking of organization, you should plan your move like a military operation. It is helpful to assign a moving manager to oversee the project. The manager can then assign specific responsibilities to trusted employees. Organizational skills are critical here, yet project management tools such as Trello, Asana and Wrike are highly beneficial for time management and scheduling specific tasks.

Schedule Dates and a Deadline

As a part of a practical organizational project, you must carefully consider the dates and times of an office relocation. For the most part, it is beneficial to keep in mind that your business is disrupted during a move. Depending on your business and its size, average relocation durations are as follow:

Small Office: 3 months.
Medium to Large Office: 1 year.
Multinational Corporation: 2 to 3 years.

Therefore, you should plan a relocation at times and dates expected to minimize any negative impact on your company’s typical operation and customer demands. For example, equipment and a company data transfer could take place out of office hours by professionals.

Use a Professional Moving Company

Professional movers are a necessity when relocating home or business. Expert movers hold experience in shifting heavy, large or bulky objects. Additionally, they also know how to wrap specific materials and handle expensive equipment. Yet the primary reason for hiring a well-known moving company is for insurance purposes. Most insurance policies cover the premises alone, and therefore any damage or loss during transit may not be insured.

Analyze and Implement an Address Change Policy

Of course, relocation means a change of address. Yet notifying the relevant personnel of an impending move is one of the most forgotten aspects when an individual, family or business relocates to another property. You should inform all appropriate parties of an intended move and follow up with new contact details when a move is complete. You should inform clients, customers and service providers about your relocation as soon as it is relevant. It is also a legal requirement of contracts.

Compelling Reasons To Start A Business Today (So You Don’t Wind Up Regretting Your Life)

Our brains remind us all the time about the negatives of starting a business. They say things like “it’s a lot of work” or “it will probably fail.” Thus, we know all the reasons why we shouldn’t start a business.

But what are the reasons that we should? That’s the topic of this post. We take a positive angle on some of the things that you could achieve if you took the risk and simply explored the possibilities open to you. Perhaps it won’t work – that’s okay. But how would you feel if you never tried? What would it be like if you never explored opportunities and tested your potential?

It Makes Work Motivating

How many people shuffle into the office on a Monday morning and wish that they weren’t there? Almost all workers find themselves in that position at some point in their lives. It’s such a drag going to work for a business that you don’t care about.

Think about how much better it would be if you were directing your own decisions and making your own choices about how and where to work. It would be a totally different ball game. You’d be able to create something you truly believe is valuable and meet the needs of your customers. You would feel so different.

It Lets You Follow Your Passion

Following your passions can be dangerous, but also rewarding. Practically all top business people are doing what they love. They aren’t getting out of bed in the morning because they have to go to work to earn another dollar. Instead, they are doing it because they love the thrill and the challenge. They have a mission and they want to change the world in some way.

Just look at Richard Branson. He doesn’t need to work another day in his life, and yet he is still pursuing projects and growing as a person. It’s his passion and it keeps him going, even when he doesn’t have to.

It’s Not As Hard As You Think

Many people imagine that starting a business is ridiculously challenging and only works in a small fraction of cases. But it turns out that it is easier than that. Franchise Direct, for instance, introduces budding business leaders to the franchising concept. Instead of starting your own business, you just plug into an existing brand and learn the ropes that way. Once you have a good idea how to run a business, you then branch out into other areas.

It Gives You Real Financial Independence

Imagine not having to rely on an employer for financial security. It would be amazing, wouldn’t it?

Well, that’s the reality behind starting a business. Once you are up and running, the business will often take care of itself. Furthermore, if you manage to scale it, you can earn way more money than would be possible through a conventional salary. Employees earn tens of thousands per year, but people who own businesses can earn tens of millions in the same amount of time.

What Are Those Extra Remote Hours Really Costing Your Enterprise?

With savings possible at around $500 per employee per month, and with companies potentially saving as much as $11,000 per employee per year, remote setups have largely been the silver lining of the pandemic. This is especially the case as six out of ten remote workers report increased productivity as a direct result of this change. However, for employers and employees hoping to traverse this new work terrain in the long term, it’s essential to note that these productivity increases have, in some instances, come at a cost.

That’s because, to achieve those productivity increases, as many as 52% of workers report working up to 10 extra hours per week. This has been made possible through both a lack of workplace limitations and tools like Microsoft 365 Cloud that ensure anytime access to files/sharing/etc and, on the surface, it looks like an undeniable benefit. But, once we take a deep dive, it becomes clear that these increasing hour-based pressures are also a driving force for a wide range of issues that still stand in the way of remote success. Of course, that’s not to say that any-time access and the ability to choose their own hours shouldn’t still be at the forefront of flexible working, but rather that you may want to begin tracking and capping employee hours with the following overwork pitfalls in mind.

# 1 – Increased dissatisfaction

While remote working and flexible arrangements have enabled a more balanced work-life equation, extra hours are also playing a major role in the fact that 27% of employees report feeling discouraged by remote work. In large part, this comes down to a lack of clear boundaries, and increasing expectations that see countless employees having to answer emails during evenings and weekends.

This is especially worrying considering that as many as 40% of employees are currently considering quitting their jobs. At a time when operations are still largely in the air, the costs of onboarding and the disruption of new training could especially prove problematic. Not to mention that retaining loyal talent will still be unlikely until steps are taken to ensure reasonable hours, justified work rewards, and the support, rather than increasing pressure, that employees need to stay happy.

# 2 – The rising risk of burnout

Despite being recognised as an occupational health issue by the World Health Organization in 2019, as many as 69% of remote employees are now struggling with burnout behind closed doors. For obvious reasons, extra hours are largely to blame, even if employees choose to increase the time they spend at their desk without any prompting. As well as leaving employees at increased risk of having to take time off while they recover from this potentially devastating problem, this increases the dissatisfaction mentioned, as well as irritability, fatigue, and distraction, all of which can impact work quality overall.

Obviously, checking in with employees regularly, either through video or phone calls, is the best way for employers to recognise and address this issue early on. That said, preventing burnout in the first place relies on an employer’s ability to ensure that even remote employees are staying within the realm of reasonable workplace hours (e.g. 8 hours tracked through a clocking-in/clocking-out system), and also that they’re booking ample amounts of leave that are too often forgotten when it comes to already home-based remote arrangements.

# 3 – Overall reduced efficiency

While longer hours might seem like great news in terms of business output, it’s also worth noting that working for too long can have a detrimental impact on efficiency, especially as studies reveal that overworking significantly hinders our ability to communicate, make decisions, and generally concentrate. Further to this, only 1-3% of the population can adequately perform after just 5-6 hours of sleep, meaning that evening work can prevent even the slightest chance of efficiency the next day.

This is the opposite of what employers, and their employees, likely hope from the so-called benefit of increased remote hours, and is yet another pressing reason why steps should be taken to keep a standard eight-hour workday, complete with regular breaks (preferably taken as a group for encouragement), to ensure outputs that remain at a reasonable standard, even when employees aren’t close by to keep an eye on.

Remote work has worked wonders for countless companies these past two years, but it hasn’t been without its downsides. Make sure you turn even those negatives into plus points by taking steps to prevent your employees from overdoing it with their extra hours.