St Kilda road really is a popular Melbourne office area. The view is excellent and there is an abundance of choice of food for hungry office workers. Being so close to the beach, what more can you ask for? The great location attracts talents and many businesses recognise St Kilda Road as an excellent place to settle down. However, moving into or out of St Kilda road can be quite costly. It can eat up too much of your staff’s valuable time, or the loss of productivity may become very costly if you’re not careful.
Today we’re providing you with 9 sure-fire hacks to help you evaluate Melbourne office removalists and save money moving into or out of St Kilda Road so that you can minimise the loss of productivity during the move and also ensure your staff’s valuable time does not go to waste. Dollars saved on your moving bills is also a bonus! Can any business really say “No.” to saving money?
Organise ahead – work out a roadmap
Just like all other business activities organising and planning is one of the most important phases. Here we focus on organising and planning ahead of the move. It’s often a good idea to plan as soon as the decision to move has been made. First, start off with a roadmap on when you expect which tasks to be completed. You can later fill out who is responsible for each stage of the road map once you work out your moving committee. (more on this later).
If you are in no position to plan ahead and have to move suddenly, you may have to skip on setting out a roadmap. A roadmap can give your organisation a direction, and also help keep track of tasks and accountability. It helps if a roadmap is available for everyone. If you’re using a cloud-based software you can manage it on your software. However, if you do not have access to a cloud-based task manager you can always make do with Google Docs since it’s free and it’s simple to manage and control access. Find out more about Google Docs.
Form a moving committee
Once you have set out a roadmap, you should form a committee in charge of the move. There is no such thing as a “set size” or “set ratio” for your moving committee since every organisation is unique. However, you can take a few things into consideration.
- Try to represent the size of each department. For instance, if your sales department consists of 10 staff, and pick packer department consists of 20 staff, you may benefit from having more pick packer staff in the committee.
- You don’t always have to have committee members from each department. Once again it depends on the size of your organisation. If your organisation isn’t large enough, then most likely you’ll have a staff member operating as two or three departments. You may also have a number of small departments. Use common sense, collapse departments for the purpose of the move and form the committee.
- Not too small, not too big. If the size of the committee is too small, it will become difficult to get things done. Also if the committee size is too big, you might end up having too many meetings without getting much work done.
- Core members of productivity should have a minimal role if they’re in the committee. Prevent the loss of productivity. You can save money on your next move into or out of St Kilda roads by keeping the cost of the move, but also by minimising loss of productivity.
You don’t have to buy packaging materials and boxes
If you have the luxury of being able to plan and prepare in advance, you can reduce your moving bill by saving on packaging material and boxes. Most businesses and offices go through a number of supplies. Whether these are thermal rolls, or tissues, most of the supplies arrive in boxes. Your business can save a significant amount of cash by collecting these boxes and packaging materials in advance. Shredded paper can be excellent bubble wrap replacements. If you’re spending a budget on packaging material and boxes, then you’re spending too much. Why not save money on your next move into or out of St Kilda road by avoiding these unnecessary expenditures?
Make a moving list & distribute
You may have a roadmap and have a committee, but you won’t be able to complete the move only via the committee. You need to have everyone on the organisation involved and have your committee delegate and check off tasks. To be able to achieve that, you’ll need a todo list for departments, or individuals. (depending on the size of your organisation) Committee members will delegate appropriate tasks via providing this todo list and overseeing them.
Colour code boxes – use stickers/ use coloured markers
You can save a lot of time and therefore money by colour coding boxes to appropriate rooms. Work out a colour for each room and simply apply the same colour stickers or mark with coloured markers on at least 3 sides of the box, ensuring that the colour of the sticker or the marker can be seen without shuffling the boxes too much. Remember that your movers may not be familiar with your new office and it might be a big ask for them to learn where meeting room 3 is located.
Your Melbourne office removalists will move the boxes into the correct rooms using the colour coded system. You will save time by avoiding the need to shuffling boxes from one room to another until they’re in the correct destination. This will save you time and money on the day of your move, but it will also help reduce the loss of productivity by saving your staff valuable time. You can read up on how to label boxes when packing for more tips.
Pick the right Melbourne office removalists
Picking the right team of Melbourne office removalists can be one of the most challenging tasks. Your business probably specialises in your area of expertise but it’s unlikely that the area of your expertise is removalist business. Having a read on How to avoid getting an inflated bill will equip you with the right set of knowledge. You will have a good understanding of how moving bills in St Kilda road work and you will also learn how to save on your moving bill in and out of St Kilda road. Also, read upon Warning signs of dishonest movers – avoid getting ripped off.
Start packing early – pack boxes as you go – don’t leave it until the last minute
Organise objects, items and files into two groups. For the items and files that you won’t be needing anytime soon, you can start packing ahead of the actual move date. If you aim to pack a box or two a day well in advance of the actual move date, you won’t have to worry about being chased after time and being less organised. Ideally, you want to avoid doing any packing on the day that you’re moving into St Kilda road. Organise items and aim to have all the items packed before the move date. Your moving committee will simply come in on the day of the move and ensure that all items have been moved.
Avoid having too many staff on the day of the move
Have the committee handle the move where possible. Depending on the industry you’re in, it may be impossible to completely shut down your business on the day of the move. If this is the case, try to avoid having too many staff on the day of the move. Fewer people show up, less you have to worry about your staff getting in the way of your movers. If your movers have to wait for your staff to move around and vacate areas, it will only increase the final moving bill.
Save money on your next move to St Kilda Road by ensuring that you have the minimum number of staff on-site at the day of the move. Your selected Melbourne office removalists will surely appreciate this decision.
If your staff can work from home during the moving phase, do encourage them to do so
If your staff can work from home during the moving phase, perhaps you should encourage them to do so. Moving into or out of St Kilda road, the cost to your business happens mainly in two ways: the final bill for the move and loss of productivity. Having your staff work from home remotely can help reduce the final bill while minimising the loss of productivity during the moving phase.
Having less staff at work on the day of the big move makes it easier for your movers to do their job, and your committee to organise and delegate the moving process. Remotely working from home you may experience some loss of productivity, but in most cases, it will be far better than putting a stop to your business functionalities. Find out more on how your business can operate with staff working remotely.
In conclusion
We’ve provided you with some simple hacks where you can easily save on office moving costs, specifically if you’re moving into or out of St Kilda roads. Consider your industry, and your staffing size to best implement these hacks. We offer a general direction to save on moving costs by reducing the final bill and minimising the loss of productivity. It is up to individual businesses to ensure that these ideas are implemented in consideration of the industry and the staff size.