The biggest risk in any office relocation isn’t moving day. It’s what happens on Monday morning.
By the time a workplace move reaches completion, most organisations feel they’ve crossed the finish line. The furniture is in place, IT systems are live, and staff have been issued with new desk booking apps and access passes. From a facilities management perspective, the project has been delivered.
But in reality, this is where the real test begins.
Across the UK, and increasingly in Scotland’s major cities, the office market has entered a period of structural change. Hybrid working has stabilised rather than receded, with around 28%* of workers now operating in hybrid arrangements and many more expecting flexibility as standard. At the same time, occupiers are consolidating space, upgrading quality and demanding more from less.
For FM teams, this creates a complex balancing act: fewer desks, more expectations, and workplaces that need to work harder than ever before.
Yet too often, and particularly where robust workplace consultancy has not taken place to inform the design, the focus of a move project can be disproportionately weighted towards logistics – decant strategies, furniture installation and day-one readiness – rather than how the space will function once people start using it.
And that’s where things can begin to unravel.
The “last mile” problem
In recent years, we’ve seen a recurring pattern. Moves are delivered successfully on paper, but within weeks, operational friction starts to emerge.
Desk booking systems don’t reflect real behaviours; storage is either insufficient or poorly located; teams that were meant to collaborate find themselves fragmented across floors; informal spaces become over-subscribed while formal meeting rooms sit underused.
None of these issues are catastrophic in isolation, but collectively, they erode the workplace experience. And FM teams are left managing the fallout.
This “last mile” problem is becoming more acute as organisations reduce their footprints. With less space to absorb inefficiencies, even small misalignments between design intent and user behaviour are amplified.
Market data reinforces this shift. While overall office availability remains relatively high, the supply of truly fit-for-purpose, high-quality space is tightening, particularly at the prime end of the market. At the same time, occupiers are pursuing a “flight to quality,” seeking workplaces that actively support collaboration, culture, and productivity. Not just accommodating them.
In this context, a workplace that doesn’t function properly post-move isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s a commercial risk.
Where moves go wrong
The root cause is rarely poor intent. More often, it’s a disconnect between planning and reality.
Workplace strategies are typically developed using assumptions about how people should work, such as how often they’ll be in the office, how they’ll use different settings, and how teams will interact.
But behaviour is messy.
For example, hybrid working patterns may be nominally agreed at two or three days in the office per week, but in practice, peak days quickly emerge. Tuesday to Thursday become congested, while Mondays and Fridays remain underutilised. If the workplace hasn’t been designed or actively managed to accommodate this, pressure points develop almost immediately.
Similarly, booking systems are often introduced as a solution to flexible working, but without clear protocols and behavioural alignment, they can create as many problems as they solve. Double bookings, ghost reservations, and informal desk ownership all undermine the intended model.
Even something as simple as storage can become a breaking point. In a drive to maximise efficiency, personal storage is often reduced, but without providing viable alternatives, teams revert to workarounds that compromise the space.
The FM burden
When these issues surface, it is facilities managers who are expected to resolve them, often without having been fully involved in the earlier stages of workplace strategy and design.
This is a critical gap.
FM teams understand how buildings operate in practice. They see the patterns of use, the pinch points, and the unintended consequences of design decisions. Yet too often, their insight is brought in too late, once the opportunity to influence outcomes has passed.
In a market where cost pressures, sustainability targets and employee expectations are all intensifying, this is no longer sustainable.
From move management to change management
What’s needed is a shift in mindset: from seeing relocation as a one-off event to recognising it as an ongoing process of change.
That means extending the scope of move management beyond physical delivery to include post-occupancy support, behavioural alignment and continuous optimisation.
It also means engaging FM teams earlier and more meaningfully in the process. Their operational insight should inform not just how a move is executed, but how a workplace is designed to function day-to-day.
Crucially, organisations need to plan for the period after move-in as carefully as they plan for the move itself. This includes:
- Monitoring how spaces are actually used, not just how they were intended to be used
- Actively managing booking systems and workplace protocols
- Providing clear guidance (and reinforcement) on expected behaviours
- Being prepared to adapt layouts and allocations in response to real-world patterns
In many cases, the most successful workplaces are not those that get everything right on day one, but those that are designed to evolve.
A more realistic definition of success
In today’s office market, success is no longer defined by whether a move is delivered on time and on budget. It’s defined by whether the workplace works consistently, sustainably and in line with business objectives.
As agile and hybrid working continue to shape demand, and as organisations look to extract more value from their real estate, the margin for error is shrinking.
The lesson is simple: the move is only the beginning.
For FM professionals, the opportunity (and the challenge) is to ensure that what follows is just as well planned.
