The Psychology of Office Moves: Minimizing Employee Stress and Disruption
Moving your home can be an emotionally unsettling experience for anyone, as it means saying goodbye to some of the day-to-day realities and routines that provide a sense of stability. The same could be said of moving a workspace, particularly since most employees spend as much time at the office as they do at home.
An office relocation can have a significant emotional impact on employees, but working with a moving partner like Corovan can help reduce the stress your personnel experiences.
The Emotional Impact of Office Moves
An office relocation inevitably brings uncertainty and requires employees to say goodbye to the physical space that has served as a kind of second home. During the relocation itself, employees will face daily disruptions to their normal routines. All of this can take a psychological toll, resulting in anxiety, fear, and a general resistance to change.
These emotions don’t just result in unhappiness. Without being properly addressed, they can have an ongoing impact on employee morale, productivity, and overall wellbeing.
The Role of a Supportive Workplace Culture
To mitigate these psychological effects, it’s vital for employees to experience support and communication from their workplace. Leaders can minimize employee stress significantly by communicating early and often, letting employees know:
- That management understands how difficult a move can be.
- That the enlistment of a professional relocation company is intended to mitigate anxiety.
- That employees have a clear channel to communicate any questions or frustrations to members of the relocation team.
Addressing psychological issues early on is critical for conveying support, and ultimately for helping employees feel like their employer has their wellbeing at heart.
Effective Communication Strategies
The significance of open, two-way communication cannot be overstated. Employers communicating about an upcoming move should:
- Be transparent and timely, keeping employees in the loop about any major changes or delays.
- Use multiple channels to share information, including employee newsletters, Slack channels, and in-person meetings and town halls.
- Address employee concerns and feedback directly and proactively.
Involving Employees in the Decision-Making Process
Another way to address employee stress and anxiety is to involve workers in the decision-making process, providing them with a feeling of control over how the relocation is handled.
For example, employers can invite employees into conversations about the new office layout and design. And, leaders can use surveys and polls to ask employees what their biggest concerns about the relocation might be. Corovan provides a collaborative decision-making process that facilitates buy-in from all stakeholders within the organization.
Minimizing Disruptions to Daily Operations
Of course, one of the most important ways to alleviate employee stress is to ensure there is as little disruption as possible during the relocation itself. To reduce downtime, work with your relocation vendor to ensure a detailed timeline and schedule.
Employee-centric packing and organization also helps. Provide each employee with personalized packing guidelines, and ensure all belongings are organized and labeled for easy unpacking at the new location.
Corovan is here to help with each of these steps, providing clear timelines, ensuring tight adherence to agreed-upon schedules and assisting with both packing and unpacking as needed.
Setting Up Familiar and Comfortable Workspaces
It typically puts employees at ease when you recreate the essence of the old office at the new location. Familiarity helps cut through any feelings of uncertainty or anxiety. This doesn’t mean you need to replicate the original layout in exact detail, but ensuring an aesthetic throughline is vital.
Also be sure to include ergonomic design and personalized touches in each workspace, providing employees with immediate reassurance that they will be able to continue doing their job effectively.
Addressing Post-Move Concerns
To help employees adapt to the new location, it’s critical to offer post-move support. This means providing resources to employees who feel stressed or overwhelmed by all the major changes.
It also means using surveys and polls to gauge lingering concerns and offering programs (whether how-to seminars or informational town halls) to help employees acclimate to their new environment.
Learn More About How We Can Take The Stress Out of Your Office Move
Our experienced team can help you design a move plan that promotes employee health and reduces stress. Get your free consultation today!
Celebrating the New Chapter: Employee Welcome Initiatives
Once you’ve made the transition into your new location, consider hosting a welcome event, inviting employees to celebrate the new beginning. Offer public recognition and thanks for the resilience your employees have shown throughout the move.
Doing so helps create a more positive atmosphere in which employees can process change and embrace new opportunities.
Don’t Overlook the Psychological Effects of Relocation
Commercial relocation can be a net positive for your company, even as it takes a psychological toll on your team. Working with a proven moving partner can help keep stress and anxiety to a minimum. Connect with Corovan to discuss our proven strategies for ensuring smooth, streamlined, and employee-centric moves.
5 Business Moving Mistakes to Avoid
There’s really no way around it: Relocating a business tends to be pretty complicated, and often a little stressful. One of the best ways to reduce your relocation stress is to steer clear of some common moving errors. Here are five of the most common mistakes that businesses make when relocating… and some advice on how to avoid them.
5 Common Business Relocation Mistakes
1) Choosing a moving company based only on cost.
When seeking the right vendor to help with your move, it’s important to do your due diligence and explore all the different factors… and yes, that includes price.
But price shouldn't be the only consideration when choosing a moving company. If you go with the lowest bidder without considering their professionalism or ability to estimate accurately, you could face costly change orders later. It's important to know your responsibilities and the mover's responsibilities and make sure they are clearly defined in the proposal.
2) Underestimating the risks.
Moving a business involves more risks than just damaged furniture and computers. Confidential information could be lost. There could be liability issues and unplanned downtime. A failure to recognize these risks can lead to some unwelcome surprises once your move is underway.
It's crucial to collaborate with your mover to understand your risks and responsibilities and ensure they have proper insurance and financial resources to protect you. And here again, choosing a vendor based not just on low bids but real logistical experience can help mitigate some of these risks.
3) Overpaying for relocation services.
While you don’t want to defer to the lowest bidder, neither do you want to overspend on moving and moving-related services.
During a relocation, businesses must accomplish more with fewer resources. If you're paying for services such as space planning and IT support à la carte, you may wind up tripling your moving costs. An experienced commercial mover can often provide many of these services at little or no additional cost.
4) Failing to realize that all eyes are on you.
Are you in charge of managing the relocation, or liaising with the moving vendor?
If so, then it’s important to keep in mind that you’re taking on a big responsibility that can affect your career and the company as a whole. A good moving partner can help reduce the risks and eliminate the possibility of mistakes. Communication is key, and a partner who asks the right questions and knows what to look for can make a big difference.
5) Overlooking small (but important) details.
When moving a business, even the tiniest details can have significant consequences. Make sure you've considered everything, from whether your furniture will fit in the new space to whether you need extra security for confidential files. An experienced mover can help you identify and address these details, minimizing your risk of unwelcome surprises once you arrive in your new space.
Avoid these mistakes and work with the best.
A trusted business relocation partner can help you manage risks and avoid the common pitfalls and save money.
Choose a Partner to Help You Avoid These Errors
In addition to avoiding these five mistakes, it's important to work with a flexible and fully staffed partner who can handle unanticipated changes on the day of the move without turning it into a chaotic event. Change orders happen, but with the right partner, they should be manageable. With careful planning and the right moving partner, you can make your business move as smooth and stress-free as possible.
We’d love to be a part of your low-stress business relocation. To find out more about managing a smooth move, reach out to Corovan today. We have more than 75 years of experience helping businesses handle the logistics of relocation, and we’d love to partner with you for your big move.
3 Drawbacks When You Hire Too Many Commercial Move Suppliers
During seasons of economic uncertainty, facilities teams look for ways to improve the operational efficiency of their moves or of their facility change programs. One of the best ways to streamline operational efficiency is to rethink vendor use.
All too often, facilities teams hire separate commercial move vendors to assist with their commercial relocation, IT relocation, and furniture installation. This “process creep” can gradually worsen over the course of many years until it becomes second nature.
Ultimately, this creates an unnecessary management burden on the facilities team, and unnecessary costs for the organization more broadly. The good news is that rethinking vendor structures could provide a great opportunity to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
1. Dealing with Difficulties Scheduling Services and Coordinating Suppliers
One of the problems with trying to manage multiple vendors is that it places a strain on the facilities team’s internal management resources. This includes budgeting, scheduling, and project oversight for multiple vendors, when in most cases it’s possible to hire a single vendor for the entire project scope.
The process of overseeing so many vendors require overly complex coordination and scheduling from the client, and that in turn drives up costs.
2 . The Cost of Unnecessary Administrative Burdens
Indeed, dealing with too much administrative complexity and time spent processing invoices, charging back departments, and coordinating vendors can result in incredible waste and inefficiency.
The processes involved with managing multiple purchase orders and managing multiple supplier relationships become burdensome, and this excess is also reflected in the overall cost of the program.
Facilities teams can improve efficiency by partnering with a single supplier to handle the entire scope of their commercial relocation and facilities changes, thereby making their job easier and creating more accountability with their vendor.
3. Creating Accountability
Accountability is the final piece of the puzzle. Not only does managing multiple suppliers create a significant project management burden on the facilities team, it makes supplier accountability more difficult to manage.
This is because the overlapping activity of suppliers is managed by the client, when in most cases this should be overseen by the supplier.
These are just a few key problems that arise when facilities teams outsource their relocation needs to multiple vendors, when taking a more centralized and streamlined approach would make more sense. For decades, Corovan has provided enterprise-level clients with comprehensive commercial relocation services, handling even large-scale and full-scope projects while eliminating the need for clients to enlist multiple vendors.
We’d love to tell you more. To schedule a consultation with Corovan, contact us directly.
5 Best Practices to Manage Your Company’s Off-Site Storage
There are a number of reasons to invest in an off-site storage program for your company. When organized well and managed efficiently, off-site storage makes it easy to save money, reusing what you already have as opposed to investing in new furniture and equipment.
A good storage program also allows your facilities management team to avoid the long lead times associated with ordering new furniture. Finally, reusing your existing assets is the more sustainable option, and may even help your company achieve some of its environmental stewardship goals.
Keep in mind, however, that not all off-site storage programs are created equal. To get the most out of your program, it’s important to implement a few best practices.
5 Best Practices for Your Off-Site Storage Programs
1) First and foremost, focus on the accuracy of your inventory information.
Inventory accuracy is foundational for any well-run storage program. It helps you make the best use of the products you have in storage and avoid redundant purchases of things you already own. Additionally, inventory accuracy provides data regarding how long products have been in storage, and how frequently they are used. This can make it easier to make truly informed decisions about what to store and what to purge.
2) Make sure your inventory information is available online.
It’s also important to make storage information accessible across your organization. Provide an online database that includes timely and accurate inventory descriptions. Make it possible for people in your organization to reserve products in advance, avoiding any confusion or delays caused by overlapping requests. Including digital images is also helpful, as it ensures that people are getting the things they really want, saving you any wasted or redundant trips to the storage facility.
3) Ensure regular cycle counts from your storage vendor.
The best practice is to have your storage vendor conduct a cycle count once or twice per year. The benefit of this is that it validates the accuracy of your inventory. It also provides confirmation of the quantity of stored assets you have. And it increases confidence in your storage program, across the organization.
4) Develop an inbound receiving policy.
The advantages of an inbound receiving policy are that it allows you to avoid receiving and storing unauthorized assets into storage. Instead, you can store only those items that you intend to reuse. As such, you can minimize storage creep and ballooning costs. Seek your storage vendor’s assistance in developing plans for recycling, reusing, or disposing of the items you decide not to accept into storage.
5) Work with your storage provider to develop relevant and usable reports.
The best reports will allow you to monitor your storage usage, identify trends in storage usage, spot opportunities to save money, and set target quantities for those items your organization uses most frequently. Min/Max reports help make decisions on liquidation or ordering new items before it is too late.
Get Storage Solutions from Corovan
At Corovan, we boast decades of experience helping enterprise-level companies make sound, strategic decisions about relocation, storage, and proper facilities use. We’d love to tell you more about establishing a viable and efficient off-site storage program. Reach out to the team at Corovan whenever you’re ready to chat.
4 Indicators Your Commercial Mover is Not Safe
During a commercial relocation, it’s tempting to focus on things like cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and logistics. Naturally, you want the move to happen as expediently as possible, with minimal disruption to your business operations. But in addition to efficiency, it’s also important to think about safety. Simply put, hiring a moving partner who isn’t safety-forward can endanger your employees, your customers, your physical assets, and the overall success of the relocation.
Why Review Supplier Safety?
As such, we recommend taking stock of a moving vendor’s safety protocols before hiring them. Consider:
- Movers operate on your property, and around your clients and employees.
- They also drive vehicles on your property and on public roadways on your behalf.
- Much of their work occurs during regular business hours.
- Good safety performance is an indication of a well-run business.
- Safety is a key factor in the supplier's cost structure.
- Promoting safety is moral and ethical business practice.
These are just a few of the reasons why it’s so important that you regard supplier safety as a top priority when planning your relocation.
How to Review Supplier Safety
There are a few considerations to keep in mind when reviewing the safety protocols of your commercial relocation partner. Here are 4 indicators your commercial mover is not safe.
1) Determine whether the supplier is contract-based or employee-based.
The first thing to keep in mind is that most suppliers, particularly in California, use subcontractors instead of direct employees. Moving companies have much less control over subcontractors when compared with direct employees, however, as the subcontractors qualify as a separate legal entity. This doesn’t mean that companies with subcontractor-based models are inherently unsafe, but it is harder to manage subcontractors and to impose safety protocols on them.
2) Ask whether the company has a safety officer.
If the mover has their own in-house EHS or safety director, that’s a good sign that they take safety seriously. Engage safety personnel in your review process, asking them about their safety criteria and about any special standards that might apply to clients from your industry.
3) Review lagging indicators.
Another important step is to review lagging indicators, which denote past performance. There are a couple of specific indicators we’d highlight.
Review Experience Modification Rate (EMR)
EMR is a workers comp measure used in calculating risk and premiums.
- The average for every industry is 1.0.
- Higher than 1 indicates below average performance.
- Less than 1 indicates above average performance.
- You can request a letter from the insurer, providing you with EMR data.
Review OSHA Logs
We’d also recommend you to review OSHA logs for past incident rates.
4) Review leading indicators.
If lagging indicators speak to past performance issues, leading indicators tell you something about preventative measures that are in place. Specifically, get an overview of the supplier’s safety program. Review their internal policies, assess whether they have any safety personnel, and inquire how often they conduct safety training.
Investigate fleet management protocols, too. Do they conduct vehicle inspections? What are their driver clearance procedures? And how old is the fleet? Older fleets tend to bring a higher risk level of accident and injury.
Put Safety First During Your Move
Safety is a critical concern during any commercial relocation. Corovan has decades of experience prioritizing the safety of personnel, clients, and physical assets. With any questions, reach out to us directly.
Is Hoteling Right for Your Hybrid Work Model?
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers everywhere are weighing the merits of the traditional work environment against the benefits of working from home. There are many competing philosophies in play, and no one-size-fits-all approach.
With that said, many businesses are coming around to a hybrid model, allowing employees to strike a balance between remote work and coming into the centralized office location. One of the most popular approaches to the hybrid workplace is known as office hoteling. This approach works well for companies adopting a hybrid work model or companies whose employees travel frequently.
The hoteling concept originated in the consulting industry in the 1990s and remains popular in that industry, but ultimately, it can work in a wide variety of business settings. Indeed, in the wake of COVID, more and more employers are considering office hoteling as a viable way forward. But is hoteling right for your business?
What is Hoteling and is it right for your hybrid work model?
Let’s start by more carefully defining the term. With office hoteling, workers no longer occupy a permanent, dedicated workspace. Instead, they rely on an office management system, whereby workers dynamically schedule use of workspaces. These workspaces might include cubicles, private offices, or desks in a large bullpen area. (Related: check out 3 Trends in Modern Office Design )
Hoteling requires a shared reservation platform to manage seating and workspaces. When employees arrive at work (or log in remotely), they access the hoteling reservation software to claim the space they need.
Office Hoteling vs. Hot Desking
It’s important to note that office hoteling shares some similarities with the concept of hot desking. Though the two concepts are alike in many ways, they are not synonymous.
What they have in common is that both processes eliminate the dedicated workspace. The core distinction is that hoteling allows for reservations, while hot desking is based on a first come first serve approach, with no reservations used.
What are the Benefits of Office Hoteling?
There are a number of reasons why employers have gravitated toward hoteling… and ultimately why hoteling may be right for your hybrid work model?. Some of the benefits include:
- Reduced square footage, translating to savings on real estate costs.
- Reduced energy consumption and costs.
- Employees enjoy greater flexibility in when and where to work.
- Provides alternative and improved worker engagement compared to the pure work-from-home approach.
- Compared to hot desking, the use of a reservation system provides greater visibility and less scheduling chaos.
What About the Disadvantages of Hoteling?
As you seek to determine whether office hoteling is right for your business, it’s important to weigh the benefits against a few notable drawbacks. Disadvantages include:
- Lack of personalization, which is important to some workers (e.g., no way to decorate your workspace with knick knacks or family photos).
- Sanitation concerns.
- With a poor office management system, hoteling can create confusion among workers.
Are you ready to explore hoteling options, including the required space planning?
A trusted workplace change partner can help you create the hoteling spaces you need to support your hybrid work environment.
Let Corovan take your old furniture and set up your new space.
Choose the Right Approach for Your Workspace
Today’s employers must be flexible, adaptive, and open to new approaches to the physical workplace. In some cases, that might mean shifting toward an office hoteling approach; in other instances, it’s best to choose something more traditional.
With any questions about how best to use your workspace, or with concerns about reconfiguring your office area, we invite you to contact the team at Corovan at any time. Find more about Corovan on LinkedIn.
It’s a Challenging Time for Facilities Teams
In recent years, facilities teams have faced unprecedented challenges. First there was the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing facilities managers to adapt to work-from-home and hybrid work setups. Challenges continue with today’s economic uncertainties, forcing some companies to consider workforce reductions. Due to these and other factors, facilities teams face a number of obstacles as they seek right-sizing facilities, or as they wrestle with the complexities of reconfiguring or decommissioning office spaces.
Managing Decommissions, Liquidations, and Other Complex Projects
These projects often involve liquidating furnishings and equipment, redeploying IT assets, and providing sustainable solutions for disposal, recycling, and donation. These are significant challenges in and of themselves, and the obstacles are compounded when they involve managing multiple suppliers, identifying resources, and developing complex project plans. Working on a national or global scale can add even more time and complexity, because it involves many local resources that are unfamiliar to the facilities teams who are planning the project.
Working with knowledgeable and competent partners can ease the burden of planning projects, while also being cost effective. An experienced mover, with a proven track record in commercial relocation, can assist with many of these tasks, relieving the burden on the facility manager.
Finding a Partner to Navigate the Chaos
But if finding the right partner can be the best way to navigate large-scale projects, the search for a relocation vendor can be challenging in itself. For facilities teams that have never outsourced to a relocation vendor, what’s the best way to find qualified help?
First and foremost, facilities teams can benefit from hiring a single supplier to oversee these projects, including national and global projects. This reduces the team’s management burden, while also expediting projects.
It’s also important to take the time to conduct proper due diligence for moving suppliers, because commercial relocation expertise is not common among most movers. Some guidelines:
- Always ask them to cite references and use cases for similar projects.
- Review experience managing liquidation processes, recycling projects, and projects involving charitable reuse.
- Beware of household movers who promote their van line affiliations as a national resource. This can be a misleading representation of their national capability.
One more thing: We suggest that facilities teams negotiate rates and fees up front, instead of project-by-project. This will expedite services and help complete projects more rapidly.
The Benefits of Choosing the Right Partner
Selecting the right relocation partner can be advantageous in more ways than one. Consider:
- Projects can be completed more expediently.
- It improves sustainability, recycling, and reuse of decommissioned assets.
- It reduces the facility team’s project management burden.
The right partner can also reduce costs associated with travel, contract administration, and supplier management. Facilities teams can create accurate budgets using existing rates. Meanwhile, pre-negotiated rates and an MSA can eliminate the need to “bid-out” every project.
Something else to keep in mind is that many task list items on a decommission or a move may be “on the fringe,” meaning there is crossover on who services the task. By hiring one vendor that can do it all, the project manager can let the vendor figure out how to get it done, bring in less people to coordinate, and alleviate a critical stress point.
Why Work with a Large Company Like Corovan?
Enter Corovan. We offer experience not only in moving, but in IT, furniture services, and in other specialties that may be relevant to a complex project. We have considerable experience in handling complicated moves for large corporations. Consider a few additional reasons to entrust your large-scale move, liquidation, or decommissioning to Corovan:
We can provide individualized solutions for downsizing, decommissioning, or other unique projects (employee packing and staging, curbside pickup, furniture removal, IT recycling).
- We can analyze the requirements and offer creative solutions to complement the facility team’s goals.
- We reduce downtime and minimize disruption by serving as a single, all-in-one vendor.
- We have the ability to identify potential problems and provide solutions, drawing on lessons learned from big clients like Google.
- We use best-in-class technology to make relocation processes better (including our proprietary Corotrak software).
Alleviate the Panic
The bottom line? Facilities teams face major hurdles, and in some cases that causes panic. Alleviate the stress associated with large-scale moves with many moving pieces. Trust the team at Corovan for your next commercial relocation.
Is Your Mover Qualified to Move Laboratories?
Laboratory moving is unlike any other type of relocation. It’s a specialized field that exists within the commercial moving industry, and as such, it would be a mistake to assume that any commercial or household mover has the skill and experience necessary to successfully relocate a lab.
Laboratory managers should take extra care to analyze their mover’s expertise, resources, and specific lab experience, bearing in mind that mistakes caused by inexperience can be extremely expensive to correct.
Logistical Concerns
For one thing, it’s important to remember that laboratory relocations come with logistical challenges that aren’t found with other types of moves. Estimating projects, timelines, and costs requires a specific set of estimating skills, and poorly constructed proposals lead to change orders, budget overruns, and unplanned downtime for the lab.
Equipment Damage Risks
Additionally, labs often have bulky, awkward equipment that is difficult to move. Lab spaces are often characterized by tight quarters which can be difficult to navigate. Scientific equipment is sensitive and high-value, and movers must often work in close proximity to busy researchers or hazardous chemicals. These are just a few of the logistical considerations that laboratory movers must take into account.
Costly Mistakes
If lab moves are uniquely complicated, they also tend to be high stakes.
Inexperienced movers often attempt to handle scientific instruments using inappropriate methods and equipment. They simply don’t know any better. But when these instruments are handled carelessly, they can be extremely expensive to recalibrate or replace.
Vetting Your Mover
Meanwhile, inaccurate estimates cause cost overruns and excessive downtime. Delays caused by inoperable equipment can be costly for the lab. And most critically, injuries sustained during the move can be serious, to say nothing of costly.
All of these challenges point to the need for carefully vetting your mover, ensuring you hire someone with the skill and experience required to handle your laboratory relocation. Indeed, upfront vetting is the best safeguard against some of the most common and costly errors.
Due diligence starts with asking good questions. For example:
- Does your company have a dedicated lab moving team?
- Please give me a step-by-step explanation of how you will move a biological safety cabinet, water jacketed incubator, minus 80 freezer, etc.
- Provide a list of lab moves completed in the last month.
- Explain any lab specific safety training your company has completed.
- Please provide relevant bios for your proposed project manager and supervisors.
Are you ready to work with a trusted lab move partner?
Corovan is trusted by some of the world’s leading medical and biotech companies for over 20 years. Our lab movers have the knowledge, experience, and equipment to properly handle your most sensitive medical and lab equipment.
Get Expert Support for Your Laboratory Relocation
Corovan has more than 75 years providing specialized commercial relocation expertise, and we have unparalleled experience coordinating laboratory moves. To learn more about our approach, contact us at your convenience.
4 Ways to Save Money on Your Next Commercial Move
During seasons of economic uncertainty, business leaders must constantly seek ways to do things more efficiently. Saving time and conserving resources in critical. Moving is no exception. In the name of efficiency, it’s crucial to plan a commercial relocation that will make the best use of the business’ time and money.
But be advised: Simply selecting a low bid for your relocation can lead to many unintended expenses and headaches for the client. In our experience, the best results come from upfront planning and experienced project leadership.
How to Save Money on Commercial Relocation
1) Work with a professional commercial mover.
First and foremost, we’ll stress the importance of choosing the right relocation partner. The right moving company representative can help guide you to a successful and cost-effective project. This provides you not only with cost savings but with scheduling recommendations.
Project management is key.
Additionally, they'll provide you with project management services for little or no additional costs. This could save you considerable time, as it involves the moving company taking on aspects of the project that you would otherwise need to do yourself.
Finally, the right commercial mover can be a valuable resource to help with cost effective solutions for decommissioning the old space, recycling, and liquidating.
2) Purge before you move.
Speaking of recycling and liquidating, another important way to conserve money is to purge before moving day. You want to avoid investing the time, energy, and cost required to move items that you won’t actually use at your new location.
A pre-move campaign.
Create a pre-move purge campaign to discard items in advance of the move. This reduces the amount being moved and costs of double handling.
Note: You’ll need to be mindful of confidential business information and take measures to securely shred it before you toss it out.
3) Plan up front to avoid unnecessary post move expenses.
The signs of a well-planned project often show in minimal to no post move activity. On the other hand, poorly planned moves often result in rework, double handling of items, and general confusion. All of these things can result in added expense, causing the overall cost of your commercial relocation to balloon.
To avoid these post move expenses, the most important thing you can do is create a detailed and realistic project schedule. Also be sure to double check all space plans and furniture placement plans to avoid costly mistakes and surprises once you get into your new facility.
4) Work with your mover to value engineer the project.
It pays to avoid working with a household mover. Instead, work with an experienced and professional commercial mover. Only a commercial mover will understand the importance of balancing business needs with other considerations that impact the total cost of the project. The primary goals involve creating a schedule that minimizes overtime and the number of days scheduled for the project.
While it usually pays to compress the move schedule, it is important to avoid the diminishing returns associated with an overly aggressive plan. (In other words, you want to avoid assigning too many resources that make the project too expensive.)
Are you ready to save time and money on your next workspace move?
A trusted workplace change partner can help you plan, purge and manage all your moves.
Talk with an Experienced Commercial Mover
At Corovan, we have decades of experience, along with proven processes and systems, that help our clients save time and money. Contact us today and let’s talk about making your commercial relocation project as efficient as can be.
3 Ways to Boost Productivity in Your Workplace in 2023
Happy and productive employees are the foundation of any successful business. Facility managers play an essential role in creating and maintaining positive workspaces — the kinds of workspaces where employees thrive.
In other words, facility managers have the opportunity to turn the physical workspace into a competitive advantage for your business, even helping you achieve your new year’s productivity goals.
Specifically, facility managers can improve the workplace in ways that boost employee engagement. Making improvements to the workplace:
- Shows concern for employee wellbeing.
- Improves health and mood for the entire team.
- Encourages collaboration and teamwork.
There are many steps that facility managers can take to create workplaces where employees flourish, feeling well cared-for and doing good, productive work. Here are three ways to boost productivity in your workplace.
1. Get Sit/Stand Desks
Some in the field of office design say that “sitting is the new smoking”... a reflection of just how unhealthy the sedentary lifestyle is, and how stigmatized it’s becoming.
In part, this explains the growing popularity of sit/stand desks. While standing is no substitute for physical exercise, it can improve employee health and wellbeing.
Changing positions throughout the day:
- Improves concentration and ability to focus.
- Helps minimize health risks associated with being sedentary.
- May even help boost mood and energy levels via improved blood circulation.
Providing sit/stand desks is a small yet effective way for facility managers to support worker performance and wellbeing.
2. Offer Flexible Work Schedules
Facility managers may not have sole discretion to provide flexible work schedules; this may require authorization from HR or from frontline managers.
But if allowed, flexible work schedules can be enabled by facility managers, potentially taking many forms to boost productivity in the workplace. These could include alternative hours, a compressed work week, hybrid work, or work from home. Facility managers can help promote flexibility and productivity by configuring the workspace for hoteling or hot desking.
Potential advantages of flexible work schedules can include:
- Improved employee work-life balance.
- Enhanced worker retention.
- Better employee engagement.
3. Create Variable Types of Workspaces
One final way for facility managers to promote employee engagement and wellbeing is by furnishing a number of different workspaces, making it so that employees are not confined to a single location.
Employees generally love the option to work in different locations, possibly sitting outside or working in collaborative spaces. And even more traditional workspaces can be enhanced by using natural light, plants to improve mood, and other elements of the natural world.
Note that, in addition to open office space or shared spaces, there must also be meeting spaces where people can have privacy for concentrated work or to make phone calls.
Turn Your Workspace into a Competitive Advantage
As we head into a new year, many companies have made resolutions to boost employee performance, productivity, and satisfaction. Facility managers can play a huge part in achieving those resolutions, all by creating better workspaces.
Are you ready to create workspaces for your most valuable asset?
A trusted workplace change partner can help you create the workspaces you need to support your team members.
Do you have questions or logistical concerns about revamping your workspace? We’d love to offer our insight. Contact Corovan at your convenience.
Not All Moving Companies Have Commercial Moving Estimating Expertise.
Before embarking on a large-scale commercial relocation, it’s imperative to seek estimates from differing moving companies, comparing not just the pricing but the breadth of service. An accurate estimate is the first step in any moving project and estimating mistakes can have real-world consequences.
Moreover, it’s a mistake to assume that all moving companies have the necessary expertise handling commercial relocation projects. For most movers, commercial relocation is a secondary business, a way to pad out revenues during seasons when residential moves ebb. But commercial relocation involves a totally different process from residential moves, making it important to procure estimates from companies with actual commercial expertise.
Corovan has developed many procedural steps to identify problems before they happen, allowing us to provide our clients with accurate and reliable estimates. We’ve been in business for more than 70 years, and we move more than 300,000 office employees annually. We have a standardized estimating methodology which we track for accuracy, fine-tuning our approach as needed. Every estimate that we offer undergoes a meticulous operational review. Most movers have no such safeguards in place, which puts client projects at risk.
Estimating Mistakes Can Cause Major Problems
What makes estimating mistakes so risky, exactly? Simply put, imprecision in the estimating process can yield a host of problems for the client, including:
- Missed deadlines
- Unplanned downtime and lost productivity
- Physical damage to assets and facilities
- Cost overruns
Moreover, estimating mistakes may create challenges providing a consistent and routine service to the end user; in other words, companies that receive bad or misleading estimates may encounter obstacles that impede their ability to serve their clients or to provide a truly excellent product.
Estimating Problems Can Be Hard to Spot
An additional challenge is that estimating problems usually aren’t perceived until the move is underway. Moving representatives may create a faulty estimate, while the moving company’s operational personnel lack the information and expertise needed to identify the problem before the move begins.
It is not until the project starts that problems become apparent, and by that point it’s too late to find a swift or seamless resolution.
It’s Crucial to Know Your Estimator
So, what can companies do to avoid faulty, inaccurate, or misleading estimates? One important consideration is knowing the background of the estimator.
Some specific points to keep in mind:
- Do they handle other types of services, such as household moving? Remember that commercial relocation is often a secondary business, but you’ll want to find a company that makes it their foremost priority.
- Ask for a high-level explanation of their estimating process. What are some of the safeguards and quality control checks in place?
- Don’t assume that someone with actual moving experience is an accurate estimator. Even experienced movers often fail to have standardized estimating methodologies.
- Ask whether the company tracks their estimates for accuracy. This is an important way of ascertaining whether they hold themselves accountable for their estimates, and whether they seek continuous improvement to their estimating process.
- Ask them questions about the estimate, e.g., How many computers did you count? What path of travel will be used to access the building?
These nuts-and-bolts questions can be helpful in assessing the estimator’s thoughtfulness and intentionality.
Quantify and Compare Proposals
Finally, make sure you’re evaluating multiple proposals, not just accepting the first one that comes your way. In comparing different estimates, take stock of key data points, including:
- Amount of packing material
- Total person hours needed to complete project
- Number of truckloads they estimated for the project
- Staffing for each day of the move
This process could help you identify a problem bid and give you peace of mind when selecting the best vendor.
Get an Estimate from Corovan
Ready to receive an estimate for your commercial relocation? Corovan is ready to deliver, drawing from decades of experience and a fine-tuned estimating process. Contact us at your convenience.
3 Trends in Modern Office Design
The modern workplace continues to evolve and adapt, moving away from the traditional layouts of old. These changes have only been exacerbated by the pandemic and the subsequent return-to-work effort; as employers seek ways to entice employees back to the office, they have rethought many of their pre-existing ideas about what constitutes an inviting, productive work environment.
Today’s workplace designers must contend with the rise of hybrid and remote work, all while cultivating spaces that might be more appealing to a younger generation of employees. Their imperative is to improve employee engagement and retention in an increasingly competitive economy, all while providing flexible spaces that meet diverse business needs.
As office designers pursue these goals, a handful of trends have emerged.
Important Trends in Office Design
1) Biophilic Design
One of the most noteworthy trends in the workplace is biophilic design. Biophilic office design takes the human need for a connection with nature and applies it to the workplace to boost productivity and wellbeing; essentially, it’s all about helping employees enjoy a greater sense of connection to the natural world, even when they’re at their desk or cubicle.
More specifically, biophilic workplaces are designed to reflect the local environment, creating a sense of symbiosis between nature and the physical workspace. This is done in a number of ways:
- The introduction of more plants into office spaces.
- Office furniture choices that mimic the shapes and textures of the natural world, providing comfort, flexibility, and most importantly, a connection to the outdoors.
- An abundance of natural lighting (again, mimicking the feel of being outside).
- The inclusion of indoor water elements and other nature-inspired pieces.
2) Agile and Flexible Workspaces
In many workplaces, hybrid work is becoming the norm: An increasingly large number of employees divide their time between the office and their individual homes, venturing into the traditional work environment perhaps a couple of days each week or on an as-needed basis. This is forcing Facilities Managers to consider how office space can be used in different ways to accommodate the new working environment.
This trend encompasses new hoteling (or hot desking) policies. For example:
- Hoteling software can be used to help employees reserve the workspace they need.
- This software can also be an asset to facilities teams as they manage demand for physical workspaces.
- Hoteling software can aggregate data for a high-level visibility of space usage and cost containment, while reporting features help forecast space usage and manage space for cost efficiency.
Trends like this help to ensure collaborative, agile workspaces that can be easily reconfigured to meet the evolving needs of a workforce. Meanwhile, mobile furniture pieces, which can be moved or installed without the use of tools, make it easy to transform a space for big group meetings or for more quiet, individualized work environments.
3) Office Art and Graphics
A final trend worth noting: Interior designers increasingly focus on graphic and art to help visually communicate the company’s values and culture. This presents a way for the company to communicate with employees, while also providing a creative opportunity for designers and business leaders.
Common examples of how office designers are using art and graphics include:
- Inspirational quotes.
- Images that reflect the local community and/or the outdoors.
- Images that subtly reflect or reinforce company values.
Navigating a Changing Workplace
The workplace is evolving at a rapid pace. For your facilities management team to keep pace, it’s important to have the right partners to support you. With any questions about relocation or logistics, don’t hesitate to contact Corovan directly.