When an office move goes wrong, it is rarely because something broke. It is because something ended up on the wrong floor, a chair went missing, or a team spent the first morning hunting for their cartons. A good labelling system prevents almost all of it. Here is a method that works for an office of ten desks or several hundred.
Start with the new floor plan
Labels only work if they point at something. Before anyone packs, get the floor plan of the new office and give every desk, office and room a short, unique code. A simple pattern is level, then number: L2-14 is level 2, desk 14. Rooms get names or codes of their own: L2-BOARD, L2-KITCHEN, L1-RECEPTION, L1-STORE.
Then give each person their code. The seating plan becomes a list: name, old desk, new code. Send it to everyone, and keep the master copy with the person running the move.
Colour by floor
On a move to more than one floor, add a colour for each level. Coloured labels or tape let the removal team sort cartons by floor at a glance, before they read a single code. Use colours that are easy to tell apart, and put a key on the floor plan.
What to label
- Every carton, on two sides and the top, so the code shows however the carton is stacked.
- Every chair. Chairs look alike and go missing more than anything else. Put the label under the seat.
- Every pedestal and drawer unit, on the top.
- Monitors, docking stations and personal equipment, on the back.
- Filing cabinets and cupboards going to shared areas, with the room code.
- Anything not moving, with a clear staying label in a colour of its own.
What to write on a label
The new code, and nothing that says what is inside a carton of confidential files. Some offices add the person’s name to desk cartons, which helps staff find their own boxes; for records, the code alone is better. Number multiple cartons for one desk, such as 1 of 4, 2 of 4, so a missing one is noticed straight away.
Empty first, then label
Furniture has to be empty before it moves. Moveall’s terms, for example, ask for loose items to be packed in cartons and furniture emptied before it is moved. Empty pedestals and drawers, pack the contents into labelled cartons, then label the empty furniture. Tape drawers shut or lock them, and keep keys in one labelled envelope.
On moving day
- Tape the coded floor plan up at the entry to each floor of the new office, with the colour key.
- Put a code sign on each desk position and room door at the new office, if the fit-out allows it.
- The removal team places every item by its code, floor by floor.
- The person running the move checks each floor against the plan before sign-off.
Shared areas and the things nobody owns
Desks are easy, because every desk has an owner. The trouble is in the shared spaces: the kitchen, the print room, the stationery cupboard, the meeting rooms, the server or comms room, the archive. Give each shared area a code and a named person who packs and labels it, and who checks it at the new office. Plants, whiteboards, wall clocks and artwork need codes too, or they end up wherever there was space on the day.
If your IT provider is moving anything from the comms room itself, keep those items off the removal labels, or mark them clearly as travelling with IT, so nobody loads them by mistake.
Common mistakes
- Using old desk numbers instead of new codes.
- Labelling cartons but not chairs and pedestals.
- One label per carton, hidden when cartons are stacked.
- Labels that describe confidential contents.
- No staying labels, so old furniture is loaded by mistake.
The rest of the move
Labelling is one part of the plan. How the whole move runs, from the brief to the set-up check, is on our page for businesses looking for office removalists in Adelaide, and the full list of jobs in order is the office relocation checklist.
Planning an office move?