An office relocation rarely falls apart because of the van or the lift booking. It more often unravels at the desk: someone has packed the wrong thing, someone else has left a drawer of personal paperwork for the crew to discover, and half the team is unsure whether the framed print on the windowsill belongs to them, the landlord or the company. Office managers who brief staff properly on packing personal desk items avoid all three problems, and they usually save a day of sorting at the other end.
The briefing itself does not need to be elaborate. What it needs is clarity: a clear definition of what counts as personal, a clear deadline for getting it packed, a clear labelling convention and a clear route for questions. Get those four elements right and the rest of the relocation programme — the crate delivery, the floor plan, the access arrangements at the new building — can run on schedule rather than being held up by a single unlabelled box of somebody’s trainers.
Setting the Brief: What Staff Need to Hear Before Anyone Reaches for a Box
The most useful briefs are short, specific and repeated. Book a fifteen-minute slot in a team meeting roughly two to three weeks before the move, deliver the message out loud once, then follow it with a one-page written summary that staff can save, print or pin up. Repetition matters because people hear the parts that affect them personally and tune out the rest, so the manager who explains the deadline in a meeting and again in writing is far more likely to get a full compliance rate than the one who sends a single email into a crowded inbox.
Start with the distinction that causes the most confusion: personal items versus company property. Staff are responsible for packing their own belongings — plants, photographs, mugs, cushions, personal stationery, headphones, chargers, books, awards, spare clothing, food from the drawer and anything else they brought in themselves. Company equipment such as monitors, docking stations, printers, filing, furniture and shared kitchen kit is normally handled separately, either by the internal IT team or by the crew on the day. Say which is which explicitly, and name the exceptions. If laptops are being collected by IT on a set date, staff need to know that before they wrap one in bubble wrap and put it in a crate.
Next, set out the deadline and the clear desk policy that goes with it. Give a specific date and time — for example, all personal items packed and labelled by 4pm on the Thursday, desks fully cleared by the end of Friday — and explain what happens to anything left behind. Vague instructions such as “pack up before the move” get ignored; a dated cut-off with a stated consequence gets acted on. It also helps to explain the reason for the deadline: crews work to a schedule, buildings impose lift and loading-bay slots, and a desk that is still being sorted at 8am on moving day can delay an entire floor.
Cover the practical side of materials and labelling in the same session. State whether crates, boxes and labels are being supplied and whether hired crates must be returned afterwards, what the labelling format is (name, desk or floor number, destination room, and a clear “fragile” marking where needed), and which items must never go into a crate — confidential files, keys, access cards, hazardous materials, perishable food, and anything of significant personal value. Finally, address hybrid working directly. Staff who are only in the office two days a week need either a designated packing window or a nominated colleague who can pack on their behalf with their permission. Close with a named contact and a deadline for questions, so nobody is guessing in the final week.
A Practical Packing Programme: Sequencing the Desk Audit, the Sort and the Label
Once the brief has landed, the next task is turning it into a sequence that staff can follow without overthinking it. The simplest and most reliable approach is a three-stage programme: audit, sort, pack. In the audit stage, each person reviews their own desk, pedestal, lockers and any shared storage they have colonised, and makes a list of what is there. This sounds tedious but it takes minutes and it prevents the classic relocation problem of discovering three drawers of archived paperwork that nobody has opened since the last move. Many offices pair the audit with a clear desk day, which gives people a legitimate reason to tackle the pile of post and old notebooks that has been quietly growing since the last restructure.
The sort stage uses a three-way split that is easy to explain and easy to remember: take home, move, and dispose. Things that belong at home go home before moving day, not into a crate destined for the new office. Things needed at the new desk get packed and labelled. Everything else — expired stationery, dead cables, old marketing collateral, broken chairs — goes into the disposal or recycling stream. This is where an office manager can add real value, because surplus furniture, obsolete IT and unwanted equipment do not simply vanish. If the move is being coordinated with one of the removal companies london teams that handle office relocations alongside house moves, ask early what they can take away, what needs separate clearance and what should be stored rather than moved, so that the instructions given to staff match what will actually happen on the day.
Packing itself should follow a few firm rules. Personal crates get one label on the top and one on the side, both showing the same information, so the box can be read whether it is stacked or side-on in a trolley. Fragile items — mugs, glass awards, plant pots, monitors if staff are moving their own — are wrapped and marked, and are ideally packed so they travel upright. Anything a person genuinely cannot function without on day one at the new building, such as medication or a security pass, should travel with them rather than in the crate. It is also worth suggesting that staff photograph their packed desk and the cable setup at the back of their monitor before dismantling it, a small habit that saves a surprising amount of time during setup.
Finally, the programme should account for the building itself. In London offices, lift bookings, loading bays, parking suspensions and building access windows often drive the timetable more than anything internal. If staff know which floor is moving first, when crates must be ready, and where the collection point is, they can plan around the constraints rather than discovering them on the morning of the move. A short map of the collection route — where crates go, which corridor is clear, which lift is booked — is one of the most appreciated pieces of paperwork an office manager can circulate.
Handling the Awkward Bits: Sensitive Items, Surplus Kit and the Final Walkthrough
Every office has items that do not fit neatly into a packing brief: the drawer of confidential documents, the well-intentioned but unwanted gift from a supplier, the personal plant that is far too large to go in a crate, the employee who has already left and whose belongings are still in a locker. The brief should address these before they become a problem. Confidential paperwork should never go into a general crate; it needs a separate, sealed and clearly marked container, or a shredding and disposal arrangement agreed in advance. Say plainly that staff should not use the move as cover for disposing of documents that would normally go through a confidential waste process, and give them the correct route.
Departing staff and unclaimed belongings need a policy, not an awkward conversation on moving day. Agree beforehand how long personal items will be held, who will contact former employees, and what happens to anything left after the deadline. In practice, most offices find it easiest to designate one labelled “unclaimed” container, log its contents and set a disposal date, rather than asking the crew to make judgement calls on items that are not theirs. The same logic applies to surplus furniture and equipment: if desks, chairs or storage are not moving to the new site, staff need to know that before they start packing them, and someone needs to have arranged clearance, resale, donation or storage as appropriate.
The final walkthrough is where the brief proves its worth. Before the crew begins loading, arrange a sweep of each floor with a short checklist: every desk cleared, every crate labelled on two sides, confidential material sealed, IT equipment accounted for, food removed from fridges and cupboards, bins emptied and keys and passes collected or transferred. Note anything that is staying behind and anything that is unusually heavy, awkward or fragile, and pass that on to the moving team in advance rather than pointing at it as it is being lifted. If a crew is doing a packing service for certain areas, agree who is responsible for which zone so there are no gaps or duplicated effort.
It is also sensible to explain, in general terms, what happens if something goes wrong: who staff should tell about damage or a missing item, what evidence is helpful — photographs taken before packing, a description on the crate label — and what the timescale is for raising it. Keep the message practical rather than alarming, and remind people that anything of particular personal or financial value is better kept with them than entrusted to a crate. Close the briefing by confirming the new office arrangements: where personal crates will be delivered, whether staff are expected to unpack their own items, where empties and hired crates should be returned, and who to contact on the day. Staff who know those five things rarely need to ask anything else, and the move keeps its momentum from the last cleared desk to the first working morning in the new building.
Born in the coastal city of Mombasa, Kenya, and now based out of Lisbon, Portugal, Aria Noorani is a globe-trotting wordsmith with a degree in Cultural Anthropology and a passion for turning complex ideas into compelling stories. Over the past decade she has reported on blockchain breakthroughs in Singapore, profiled zero-waste chefs in Berlin, live-blogged esports finals in Seoul, and reviewed hidden hiking trails across South America. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her roasting single-origin coffee, sketching street architecture, or learning the next language on her list (seven so far). Aria believes that curiosity is borderless—so every topic, from quantum computing to Zen gardening, deserves an engaging narrative that sparks readers’ imagination.