An office relocation is one of the most difficult tasks that you can try to accomplish as the head of a business. Your field of expertise could be the other end of the earth from real estate and property removal, but you will be expected to have a calm, rational, confident and knowledgeable approach to the situation when truthfully you are far from many of these things. Thus it is imperative that you do the appropriate research, and the task is multi-faceted and more complex than one person can really manage alongside running a business. Luckily, below are some tips to try and ease the stress of your office move. The first and most important thing to do is to hire professional assistance. An office planner and designer will pick up on numerous details about prospective properties that will go by many laymen. As it is unlikely that you or any of your employees have professional experience in this field, it is important and could well save money in the long run hiring a professional to assist you and directly cater to you and your businesses personal needs. This can often be seen as an easy way to cut down costs by many businesses looking at prospective relocations, but by not hiring assistance you run the risk of encountering issues with a property down the road that were not considered prior to the move. Furthermore, a professional will find ways and have the necessary business contacts in relevant fields to help save you money in other areas – in short; a head of operations could pay for themselves. Another note is that this piece of advice also applies to professional moving companies. They may require more man power and demand a higher fee than a more informal operation, but moves of this scale are best left to those who have years of experience and more comprehensive insurance policies. However, just because you are looking at hiring a professional to assist you doesn’t mean that the existing employees shouldn’t be involved in the process at all. A representative of each department in your company should be consulted and asked to draw up a short report on your current office, its shortfalls and the changes they would like to be made in their new area of work. This can then be handed to the head of the operation and a compromise can be drawn up and compared with the budget. This will help employees feel involved and accommodated in the new move which is important for work ethic and morale. Often in times of moving, unless it is a grand up scaling of office space, employees will be wary of what an expensive process could mean for their potential future, so being involved is an important way to comfort them. As alluded to in the previous paragraph, it is mandatory that you provide a realistic budget to the head of the operation. Obviously the person with specialist knowledge should be consulted to see if the budget you draw up is possible and will allow you to deliver all the changes you want – but concluding and setting a realistic budget is an important step to making sure the office move goes smoothly. Furthermore, a similar idea should be drawn up in regards to time scale. The two are inextricably linked, if you over run on time you are likely to run over financially too so making sure the time frame and budget agree with each other and both are achievable.