Moving office? Here's what can go wrong

Deciding to relocate your office is a cultural turning point for your business. It offers a chance to re-energise your people, align your workplace with your strategy, and create a future-fit environment. But without the right planning and partners, office moves can quickly unravel into costly, disruptive, and lengthy experiences.

At Insightful Environments, we’ve seen it all, from forgotten cables to culture-crushing design flaws. But despite your best planning efforts, unforeseen risks often creep up that can be avoided when identified early enough.

Here, we take a candid look at some less obvious, often overlooked office moving risks, and highlight some telltale signs to look out for and pitfalls to avoid.

Risk #1: Failing to link the office move with your business strategy

Too often, the office move is treated as a logistics project only; a matter of boxes, desks and floor plans, instead of a critical moment and opportunity to reimagine how work happens in your business.

Your workplace itself is a tool for performance. It should reflect your values, support hybrid work, attract talent, and drive collaboration. If your move doesn’t reflect that vision, you're simply trading one postcode for another.

Key warning signs you’re at risk of a strategically unaligned move:

• You haven’t clearly articulated how your new space supports your growth, brand, or wellbeing ambitions.
• You’ve failed to engage leadership in shaping the vision.
• You haven’t checked the accuracy or validity of your data and may be using outdated headcount-based planning metrics.

Risk #2: Not planning for the realities of hybrid work

There’s no denying the way we work has changed, and many businesses have pivoted their physical office spaces to the realities of hybrid work. Your new office ought to do the same. Moving without a hybrid-ready workplace strategy is a recipe for underused space, frustrated teams, and talent loss.

According to Steelcase research, 87% of employees will spend at least some

of their week working from the office, but they want purpose-driven, choice-rich environments they like being in when they do.

Common mistakes non-hybrid office moves make:

• Procuring too many desks without thoughtfully creating enough collaboration or focus zones.
• Poor video conferencing setups for hybrid meetings.
• Failing to plan for asynchronous work habits, learning, and knowledge sharing.

Risk #3: Technology is an afterthought

In the hybrid era, technology and space are inseparable. Yet tech integration is often tackled too late in the moving process or delegated without aligning the tech strategy to people’s needs first.

From plug-and-play meeting rooms to mobile collaboration tools, every tech-related decision should enhance equity, participation, and productivity. If not,  it risks becoming a hindrance that negatively impacts both productivity and the employee experience.

Examples of technology missteps to avoid:

• Underpowered and poorly-equipped meeting rooms.
• Lack of intuitive video collaboration tools and camera blind spots.
• Teams are unable to connect fluidly with remote colleagues, wasting time.

Risk #4: Poor employee engagement and communication

Change is emotional. If employees feel left in the dark or their concerns aren’t heard, the move can breed resentment and resistance, especially if it forms part of wider organisational shifts like mergers or acquisitions.

Gen Z and millennials — soon to represent the majority of the workforce — prefer workplaces that support wellbeing, flexibility, and shared values. A poorly handled move with minimal or intermittent communication sends the wrong message and can cause frustration and anxiety that ultimately impacts productivity.

To avoid this:

• Actively discourage one-way communication from leadership; open communication channels up for cross-business conversations. 
• Encourage employee involvement in co-creation or feedback.
• Identify and capitalise on opportunities to build momentum and excitement around the move.

Case study: Helping Ford Credit with relocation change management

Risk #5: Ignoring inclusion, neurodiversity, and wellbeing

Not all employees experience space the same way. An outdated “one-size-fits-all” approach to office design risks excluding neurodiverse individuals, those with disabilities, or anyone needing greater sensory or cognitive flexibility. 

An office move presents a golden opportunity to create an inclusive, supportive, and uplifting environment that benefits every employee. Designing for inclusivity and wellness isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s critical for unlocking your team’s full potential. And yet it’s frequently overlooked in office moves.

Inclusive design oversights to look out for include:

• No acoustic privacy or shielding in open plan areas.
• Lack of individual control over lighting or noise exposure.
• Inaccessible circulation or poor wayfinding.

How Insightful Environments helps you get it right

At Insightful Environments, we do more than help you move your office furniture from A to B. We help you transform your workplace for the next chapter of your business’s story.

Our end-to-end approach blends workplace strategy, design, and furniture delivery to ensure your new office supports how your people work now and in the future.

Here’s how we de-risk your office move:

✅ We conduct workplace strategy and discovery workshops to align stakeholders and define goals.

✅ Whether it’s an internal, departmental move or a full-on relocation, we expertly plan and manage your entire move process for a stress-free experience.

✅ We provide expertise in creating hybrid-ready workplace design that balances individual focus, team collaboration, and overall flexibility.

✅ We offer technology planning for seamless in-person and remote collaboration.

✅ Our experience designing inclusive and neurodiverse solutions ensures everyone can thrive in your new office space.

✅ We provide hands-on, people-first change management support to get your people on board and aligned with your move goals.

✅ We offer insight-led furniture and fit-out from our extensive portfolio of Steelcase and partner solutions, which we advise on, procure, and install for you.

Conclusion

Moving office isn’t just a logistical challenge; it’s a strategic opportunity for your business to reinvent itself internally. Done wrong, it can result in widespread misalignment, poorly integrated technology, unhappy, disconnected employees, and exclusion of neurodiverse or underrepresented groups.

But done right, your office move can radically transform how your people work, collaborate, learn, and thrive professionally. 

Don’t just move offices, move forward.

Learn more about our end-to-end office moves services now, or get in touch if you’d like to discuss how IE can help your business move to the next phase.