Your Office Requirements

Before you even start viewing potential offices, you need to prioritise your requirements. Office space is expensive, and bigger is not necessarily better. You need to think about both your current and future requirements, and also take into account changing working trends. For example, consider a flexible working policy – obviously the feasibility of this depends on the nature of your business, but perhaps you don’t need one workstation per employee - maybe a hot-desking system would work better.
Additionally, consider the benefits of break-out area at which employees can relax and drink a cup of coffee or read the newspaper – it may seem unnecessary, but you would be amazed at what a ‘chill-out’ space can do for staff morale.
How do you establish who is going to design your new work space? Thanks to modern-day home makeover programmes, we all fancy ourselves amateur interior designers. But while you might have excellent creative brainpower already on the payroll who could produce some outstanding ideas, they probably won’t think of things such as electrical capacity, health and safety and compliance with the Disability Act.
By all means, get their input, but let them work alongside office interiors professionals who will ensure that your move is by the book, hence avoiding any future headaches. Of course, choosing the right design and build company is key – do you like the people? What do their previous clients say about them? Will the provide after-contract service? And is their quote competitive?

Moving Office
Now’s the time to start looking for a new office – you have collected all the relevant information so this process should be relative hassle-free. I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to think ahead – how fast is your business expanding, and is the new office space able to accommodate future growth?
Moving business isn’t as straightforward as moving house – you need to ensure that customer relationships aren’t affected, and that staff downtime is kept to a minimum. Devise a relocation policy which will give the move structure and allocate responsibility to staff and movers. Decide how and when to inform clients and make the moving day as easy and fun for staff as possible.
Once you’re settled in to your new premises, you can breathe a sigh of relief – and now’s a good time to celebrate – throw an office-warming party at which you can thank staff for their help and patience and invite clients to view your new space.

About the Author
Daniel Taylor is Founder and Managing Director of Metro Design Consultants, a leading design and build company that counts Boeing, The Conservative Party and Amicus among its clients.

(Source: metrodesign.co.uk) - Office relocation guide – How to avoid office move pitfall (part 1)