The final call
An office move can be a huge undertaking. But nobody does it alone. Three office managers and a CEO who have been through it tell us what mattered most, what they let go of, and how they stayed sane doing it.
Our own office manager Rebecca Baddeley picked up our move on her first day in the job. It was mid-construction and she jumped straight into the deep end.
Contractors running late, movers unable to step in when booked, permits needed at the last minute. Asked what it was all like, she tells it truthfully. “It’s a whole job in itself. You can’t just do this on top and go, this is fine on top of my normal work. It’s not. If you want to do a good job, that needs to be your job, and that’s it.”
Stacy Bergener, who manages the workplace experience at Tebi, moved from three floors into one across a four-week window after the company doubled. Asked how much work a move actually is, she doesn’t sugar-coat. “It’s an insane amount.”
Melissa Hendrikse at Van Gooi says proper forward planning and budgeting are the only way to manage it. “It’s a lot,” she says.
Despite the challenge, they all did it. Melissa pitched the case for what she wanted for the new office and won approval. Stacy turned around a move against a four-week clock and levelled up the space. Rebecca stepped up when it was needed and delivered something exceptional under pressure.
Across the board, the message was clear: know what matters most, leave yourself space, and ask for help.
Melissa shares the load with her fellow colleagues. “You don’t have to do it alone. You can always ask for help, and then together you come up with something good.”
Stacy focuses her energy into the few things the office cannot do without, whittles down what isn’t needed and stays realistic about the rest. “Realise as soon as possible that you’re not going to please everyone all the time,” she says. “Make the decisions you’d want people to make for you, and take care of yourself at the same time.”
And Rebecca says know your boundaries and be clear about what’s really possible. “You really have to take other things off your plate. You need to figure out how to be clear with your boundaries really quick. And that’s a hard thing to do, but I think it’s the only way to actually do this successfully.”
The three moves were different, but none of them was a solo effort. Each manager had to decide where their time and attention mattered, where someone else could take over or who to trust on getting a job done, and when something could wait or when it needed planning early.
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