In April, I will be part of an Access Group Round Table discussing the issues of a major relocation.
The event is co-sponsored by Schulich School of Business and York Region.
The event is titled Relocating for Growth – What are the hidden challenges?
As part of my preparation for the event, I sent out a question on Linkedin Answers.
When a company wants to do a major relocation (over 250 employees) what are the major issues of concern?
In April I am running seminar for executives in 50 enterprises who are planning a major relocation. The answers to this question will provide the kinds of information to stimulate the conference. I am looking for answers from people with experience doing this. Please include a line or two about your experiences.
I received 39 answers which were varied and had some great insights. The results were quite interesting. The majority of the people were concerned about the employees. There were quite a number of suggestions to assist in the planning.
I have organized and edited the results. I removed as much duplication as possible. I think the results provide an interesting insight into how large a problem relocation is.
What is missing is the corporate strategy level, the details that are important at the CEO and Board Room level. This information will come out at the Round Table followed up by a White Paper.
Please leave your name in the comments if you would like receive an invitation to the event.
Event registration is limited to senior executives (Director level and above) of companies with more than 20,000 sq. ft. of space.
E- mail me at zale@access-group.ca
The summary below is not complete – the complete results can be found here: Relocations – LinkedIn Answers Summary
| Issue | Comments |
| Employee | Don’t forget that the success of a relocation over a significant distance is determined by the engagement of the employees and that each employee has at least two dimensions which must be accomodated. First, his work and professional dimenesion. As second, and maybe even more important, is his personal and family dimension. I have seen otherwise successful repositioning of personnel crash and burn because of family issues which quickly become work issues. Engage the total employee. Specifically include programs and consideration of his personal family dimension. |
| Employee | Who are the people involved in the relocation? What level of involvement will they have? Moving a bunch of factory workers is very different from moving a bunch of highly skilled knowledge-workers. The key here is communication i.e. ensuring that everyone knows the rationale for the move and their part in it timetables, actions, etc. Also ensure communication style & frequency fits the audience. As a rule, the more educated the people involved, the more scope for problems so the more the communication. You may also want to think about identifying key stakeholders and influencers among the crowd and spend even more time communicating with them |
| Employee | Employees impacted by a move experience stresses we sometimes fail to recognize. Making sure we have answered their questions and concerns about the new facility is key. Where are they going to park? Who is packing their stuff, or do they have to pack themselves? Are there places for lunch nearby? In every office move I have managed, it is understanding and responding to the concerns of the employees that has made the most impact on the firm’s ability to manage the change. |
| Employee | The biggest item that I would recommend be a focal point is communications. It is very important to communicate openly to your employees – about location selection in general as well as tactically about how the move will be handled (where are the boxes, where to they go at what time on which day, etc.). Also, I think that communicating to clients that a move is taking place and that no business interruptions are anticipated, although there may be some minor temporary inefficiencies, etc. |
| Move Execution |
These relates to the peripherals that need to be relocated. It could range from simply moving desks, phones and a couple of files, to custom-built, complex precision machines and environmentally sensitive equipment. If existing equipment needs to be moved (very likely) identify who is responsible for packing, moving and unpacking. Off course things like files can be packed and unpacked by end users, and you may need your IT guys with the servers but you’ll want to get professionals to move heavier and more specialised stuff. Relocating mission critical equipment many require that parallel equipment be in place. Otherwise it may be possible to achieve this through planned downtime. |
| Operational Effectiveness | What processes are the people performing that are going to be relocated? Relocating simple telephone (call centre) processes is quite different from relocating complex or specialised research & development processes. The key here is to evaluate how critical it is for the process to remain intact, identify the areas of risk that can compromise the processes and then build responses into you relocation plan to minimise the risks. For example, relocating a mission critical processes may require that parallel teams be in place so that the switch over is instantaneous. |
| Site Selection | There is evidence that the wrong location or a ‘bad’ fitout may increase rates of voluntary attrition and deter good candidates from applying for jobs (see Richard Florida’s article on the Economic Geography of Talent as an example of the former – Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92(4), 2002, pp. 743-755).When you consider that the cost of replacing a skilled staff member is often estimated at around 18 months’ salary, the inference is that penny pinching on corporate accommodation is not necessarily in the best interests of the firm. Conversely, you certainly don’t need a ‘Taj Mahal’ budget to have a great workplace.The lesson here is clearly that relocation decisions should be made strategically and holistically. Applying change management principles early and getting staff involved and engaged in this process is a good start: there are many examples of relocations that have led to substantial attrition, much of which was probably avoidable had a more effective change management process been applied. |
| Strategy | Identify who is impacted by the relocation outside of those being relocated e.g. customers, business partners, suppliers, etc. Identify and measure current performance indicators before the move and create a scorecard around them. A “before” and “after” comparison of your scorecard will allow you to identify problems that may have resulted from the relocation. For example, in one assignment, we tracked the call patterns of customer service agents before and after the relocation. Changes in the call pattern allowed us to identify problems that we would not have readily been able to identify. |
| Tiiming | What will be happening in the normal cycle of that business during the period of 45 days prior to, and 45 days after the move.A company that cannot operate for one day is one day to many. So one should focus on smart operation in the relocation, like identifying Single Points Of Failure, bottlenecks, and stuff like that. Not only internally, but also external: do my customers knwo where to reach me, do my partners know, suppliers, etc. Also look at different solutions for solving problems, like when people need to move because of traveling time, try to support home working. |
Keyword Related posts:
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Zale your summary and analysis was great! In fact I liked your presentation of the question and the results so much, I have adopted your approach for my LinkedIn Answers… So glad to have met you through this question!
Zale, my experience was ten years ago with Deloitte & Touche. I was always involved in the office moves with respect to the technology of the office. An average move was usually around 150 people, but we had quite a few over the years well in excess of 1000. These large moves were within WTC in 1992, from WTC to W. Broadway in 1993 in the wake of the first terrorist bombing there, the consolidation of multiple practice offices spread out all over Detroit in 1993, and another office move in Hartford in 1992. The issues were always the same. Here’s a birds eye view (looking at technology only)
1. Look at planned infrastructure in the way of communications & connectivity. Be involved with the planning committee, architects, general contractors at every step of the way to ensure planned technology infrastructure could be accommodated.
2. Look at your technology and your budget. This was usually a time to simultaneoulsy upgrade select systems as the network would be down and the users would be offline.
3. Coordinate, check-in with, look over, bug, pester and whatever else it took to make sure vendors and contractors knew the schedules, could meet the deadlines and got it right the first time.
4. Keep management in loop with status reports throughout the process.
5. Be on-site, directing, helping, coordinating and taking responsibility for every aspect of the technology, that it was done well and done right. Sleep is not an option. It’s technology and the world will come to a grinding halt if it doesn’t work. Being a hero is not an option.
6. When everything is finally done right, get together afterwards with all the other people involved in pulling off this feat so magically, go out and celebrate.
It is more than communicating with the employees, it is communicating with the mid-level managers who are the face of management for most of the employees. They need the tools to address any issues when the relocation is announced. A good piece of writing I came across was “Leading out Loud” by Terry Pearce (Pages 13 and 14). If you need a scan of it please let me know.