Planning for space can be a major challenge for growing businesses. The bootstrapping in all of us tries to avoid taking on too much space which inflates overhead costs. The swashbuckling entrepreneur in all of us wants to take on lots of extra space to accommodate all of the growth that we know is in our futures. My partners and I wrestled with this several times. In our first few moves we thought we had plenty of room for growth, only to find that by the time we moved in, we had almost outgrown the space. In a couple of later moves and market expansions, we over-estimated the growth potential and had to eat the added overhead our higher rents created.
An issue that often gets lost in this internal debate is the cost and hassle of simply moving a business. The move can be disruptive to business operations and can hurt worker productivity. Depending on the type of business and the nature of the move, the logistics can become a nightmare. What is interesting, is that the same disruptions can occur even when a business rearranges the space they already have.
StartupJournal offers some advice on how to make a move as painless as possible — not pain free, but maybe not as bad as it could be for all concerned.
Office relocation — even a move to a different desk — can stir up a mix of emotions. The key to successfully moving a business, or within a business, is in how the move is presented to employees, experts say.
This is good advice. Employees need to have “ownership” over the move as much as possible. If they do, they will go a long way to making the move smooth, quick, and relatively easy.