When preparing for office relocation, what comes to mind? Many people focus on the long list of physical tasks that must be completed before the move, but that is not the most effective place to start. Communication is what ensures all of those physical tasks are completed in a timely and efficient manner, so you must start by establishing lines of communication between all of the following as applicable:
* Departments within your company
* Your office and personnel of the office you are relocating into
* Your office and the moving company
Many of the problems encountered during a corporate relocation are a result of a lapse in communication. For example, imagine one of your employees is charged with the task of measuring the copy room in the new office location in order to determine how much of your office equipment will fit comfortably. You know that you will need to downsize the copy room, but which machines you bring will depend on the exact size of the new room.
Unfortunately, your employee takes the measurements but fails to communicate that information to other employees whom you have put in charge of packing up the copy room. You tell the other staff members that some of the machines will need to be sold because the new copy room is smaller, so they wait to learn those dimensions before moving forward with their packing. Since they never learn the exact size of the new copy room, they never finish packing that room.
When the moving company shows up to complete your office relocation, they move all of the equipment in your copy room to the new location. You walk into your new office and find copy equipment lining the hallway, and now you have the difficult task of determining what to keep and how to arrange it into that room.
To avoid mistakes like this, you have to start organizing your office relocation by opening the lines of communication. Identify trustworthy leaders and put them in charge of communicating with specified groups. These groups should include all employees within your company, personnel at the new office you are moving into, and the moving company handling your relocation.
Have a one-on-one conversation with each of your communication leaders to ensure they understand who they are responsible for communicating with and what they are to communicate with those people about. If your communication leaders assign some communication duties to select members of their groups, make sure they follow-up with those people to ensure messages are moving down the line as expected.
It is often the small things that are not communicated, and those small things can lead to big mistakes and hassles. The example used here involved one person failing to communicate a few simple numbers, but it created a mess that others had to sort out later. This is why it is so important for communication leaders to be assigned.
J.H Bennett 
Reblogged this on The Way To Move .