An Office Move to Remember
Moving offices can be fraught with difficulties, particularly now when the recession bites and many companies are forced to downsize in people and office space, but not necessarily in workload. Survival in business is about facing facts.
Being Organised
For smaller companies the need to move offices can come upon them rather abruptly, when cash flow dries up and big regular orders fail to be renewed. When things start to go wrong, it is paramount to be honest and realistic about the chances of improving cash flow by simply hoping for sales to pick up. Reducing costs, and this usually means the largest costs first, is a vital part of surviving the recession. Once the difficulties are faced, sorting through old files and throwing out what isn’t needed, is as much part of down sizing as looking at sales forecasts and possible redundancies.
Packing up anything that isn’t needed on a daily/weekly basis is the first important step. Writing down the contents of each moving box and keeping the inventory lists in a handy file is essential. Using the right moving boxes is also an important part of getting organised to face the change. Many stationery companies sell green recyclable cardboard boxes, but it should be considered that cardboard boxes are rarely strong enough to withstand more than one office move. Reusable, green recyclable moving boxes can be rented cheaply for just the week of the office move, if by a lucky chance one has found the right office space which will suffice for a few years to come.
Going Green and Practical
Made from industrial strength recyclable plastic, reusable moving boxes are not just good news for the environment, they are also good news for companies needing to store their documents safely and drily for a period of time. If the recession forces a small company to down size in office space, then documents and office equipment not needed every day may well end up in storage until such time when the company’s business picks up again and large premises can be secured.
Deciding what is vital for the immediate survival of the company and what one can do without can be difficult, but by labelling strong reusable boxes correctly and fitting them with an inventory, while they are sitting in storage, a company has the option to hire a cheap garage or storage facility out of town until things look better financially. As long as the moving boxes are accessible, with a documented paper trail that tells what is where, finding records of contracts up for renewal or previous VAT returns shouldn’t be a problem.
Green recyclable moving boxes ensure that companies will be able to dispose of these boxes once they are no longer needed or have outlived their natural shelf life. With an increasing financial pressure on companies to adhere to environmentally friendly policies of waste disposal, going green as well as “going practical” during a cash flow crisis is advisable.