Advantages of Moving Office
If you’re planning an office relocation, you’ll know that it can be an exciting project. If successful, your office relocation can transform your company, improving staff and company performance. It could even help to transform your company by providing your staff with a space that brings your culture to life.
However, moving your company from one office to another is a huge project. Depending on the size of your office, it could be a year or more before you can complete your move. Office relocations can also be expensive. Costing anywhere between £50 and £100 per square foot for the fit out alone, a mid-spec 5,000sq/ft office relocation would cost around £400,000 - £500,000, excluding office leasing costs.
To justify such a huge investment of time, effort, and money, there have to be several significant benefits to moving office. And there are: a well-planned and executed office relocation can deliver excellent ROI for your business by improving the performance of your staff and company as a whole.
At Zentura, we’ve been helping companies in London and across the UK move offices since 2008. In that time, we’ve worked on hundreds of different projects, all with different briefs and objectives. In this article, we’ll walk you through 7 of the most important benefits of an office relocation, and how you can maximise their impact on your project.
Improved Talent Attraction & Retention
One of the most important benefits of relocating your office is improved talent attraction & retention. Recruiting and retaining high-performing staff is absolutely essential to the success of your business. A recent study found that high performers are 400% more productive than average ones.
Your office relocation can improve your talent attraction in two key ways. The first is location. By ensuring your workspace is well located with a good talent pool or in a prestigious location, you are giving your company access to the best possible talent. Office relocation can also improve your recruitment by creating a great first impression. An eye-catching, on-brand reception and interviewing area will help convince interviewees that they want to work at your company.
An office relocation can also help you retain your high performers by creating an engaging workspace experience. Staff engagement is the connection your people feel to your company’s culture and values. It’s a crucial component of staff retention because if your people are not engaged at work, they have little incentive to stay. You can improve staff engagement through office design by giving your people more control over where and how they work. You also need a variety of working environments within your own workspace to suit the different ways your people work. To learn more about how office design can help you attract and retain the talent you need, read this article.
Better Wellbeing
Ensuring your people are physically and mentally healthy is essential to the success of your business. Improved worker wellbeing leads to reduced absence and increased resilience engagement, and productivity. A key part of the wellbeing of your people is your office – the place they spend most or all of their working lives. An office relocation is a great opportunity to improve the wellbeing of your staff through your office design because you have a blank canvas to work from.
The best way to improve the wellbeing of your staff with an office move is by maximising the biophilia in your new office design. Biophilic design is a design concept that advocates the use of natural materials throughout the workplace. This includes everything from timber wall slats to fresh air. A recent study found 78% of employees say access to natural light and views improves their wellbeing, and 70% report improved work performance. To learn more, read 9 ways to improve workplace wellbeing with office design.
Boosted Productivity
Improved productivity is a crucial benefit of your office move. Without motivated staff consistently producing great work, your company cannot achieve its potential. Productive staff are crucial to building a successful and profitable company. Despite the importance of staff productivity, improving it remains a problem. Most companies have seen a 3-6% productivity drop since 2020. As there place where your staff spend most or all of their working lives, your office has a profound impact on their performance. Research shows that a well-designed office can increase productivity by up to 20%.
To maximise the productivity of your staff in your new office, you need to provide a space that matches the way your people work. A bland, desk-based layout will stifle the motivation and focus of your teams, reducing their performance. you need to provide a variety of collaboration spaces of different sizes and styles to match the different ways your people work. You will also need to provide focus spaces, such as office booths, where your people can work without distractions.
Improved Collaboration
While improving individual performance is an important consideration in any office relocation, what really matters is improving overall company performance. To do this, it's essential that your team can work together effectively. Collaboration involves working together to achieve a common goal, not just sharing information.
To maximise collaboration in your new office design, you need to provide a variety of collaboration spaces. In the age of hybrid working, the role of the office has shifted to a collaboration and networking hub. Collaboration mostly happens informally in small teams, so these should spaces that encourage this are crucial. You need to provide a variety of different spaces to facilitate the way your people now use the office.
Reduced Lease Costs
Real estate is the second highest overhead expense most companies face. Most services companies spend 10-15% of annual revenue on real estate. Needless to say, the return on an expense this large needs to be maximised. However, the average organization has 30-50% more real estate than it needs. This means you could be wasting more than 5% of your annual revenue on office space you don’t need!
An office relocation provides a great opportunity to reduce your rental costs by moving to a new office with a much more efficient layout. Given that office space in London costs between £80 and £120 per sq/ft, reducing your office space by 30-40% will be a huge saving for your company. To maximise real estate savings when moving office, you should work with an experienced workspace designer who can create the most efficient layout possible.
Reduced Operational Costs
An office relocation can also help you reduce the operational costs of running your office every day. These can come to a surprising total – around 25% of annual rent. An office fit out is an opportunity to reassess all these costs and how to reduce them going forward.
The most important operational cost to consider when moving office is your energy costs. Energy costs have risen sharply in recent months, and efficient systems are more important than ever. For example, air conditioning often accounts for around 40% of a company’s total energy usage. Modern HVAC systems are up to 50% more efficient than systems from 10 or more years ago. This can create a 20% saving in your total office energy costs. Modern electrical appliances are also much more efficient than outdated options.
On-Brand Design
An often overlooked aspect of office relocation is how your new office design can reflect and enhance your brand. Many people think of office branding as a logo in the reception and a few walls in the brand colours. However, branding is much more than the colours in your space. It includes the entire experience your staff have throughout the day, from the chairs they sit in, to the coffee they drink.
To ensure your new office is on brand, you need to create an office that brings your brand to life. The first part to improve your culture through brand experience is to make sure the layout of your office matches the way your people need to work. The finishes are also important. Digital graphics, graffiti, or artwork can help communicate your brand. It can also be extended to every finish in your space, from the carpets to the upholstery on the task chairs.
Your Office Relocation
An office relocation can have many different benefits for your people and company. Here, we’ve explained the most important ones and how you can make the most of them. By improving the individual and collective performance of your people at the same time as reducing your real estate costs, an office move can improve your company significantly.
To learn more about planning an office relocation, download our ultimate office relocation planning guide. It’s one comprehensive guide that will help you understand everything that goes into moving office, what it costs, and how long it will take. You can download your copy here.
