Relocating a team to Athens, in roughly the right order

Moving one person to a new country is a project. Moving a team is a programme, and the order you do things in decides whether it feels like either. We house people in Athens for more than forty companies, and the moves that go smoothly tend to share a sequence. Here it is, in roughly the right order, with the parts people get wrong flagged as we go.

Roughly is the operative word. Half of what follows can happen in parallel, and none of it needs to be perfect before someone gets on a plane. The goal is a soft landing, not a flawless one.

First: a place to land

Counterintuitively, housing comes before most of the paperwork, because almost every other step needs an address. A tax number, a bank account, a phone contract, a school registration: each one asks where you live. A furnished apartment, ready on arrival, gives your people a real address from day one and somewhere to work from while the rest catches up.

This is the case for serviced apartments over hotels on a relocation. A hotel is a room. An apartment is an address, a kitchen, a desk and a neighbourhood, which is what someone actually needs while they decide where they want to live for good.

Give someone a kitchen and a desk and they stop feeling like a visitor by the second week.

Then: the paperwork, in parallel

With an address in hand, the administrative work can run alongside the settling-in rather than blocking it. The usual sequence is a tax number, then a bank account, then the longer-term essentials: healthcare registration, and schools if families are involved. None of this needs the employee to have found a permanent home first, which is exactly why the temporary one matters.

• Tax number: needed for nearly everything else, so start here.
• Bank account: easier once the tax number exists.
• Phone and internet: a local number smooths every other appointment.
• Schools: the longest lead time, so begin the conversation early even if the family arrives later.

How invoicing works

For companies we keep the money side deliberately dull. One point of contact, one monthly invoice, proper documentation for your finance team. No employee standing between the company and a payment, no expense claims for rent. If you are housing several people, they can sit on a single invoice rather than one per head, which we cover in more detail in housing a team in Athens.

Lead times

The question every relocation manager asks is how fast. For a single apartment we can usually have somewhere ready within 48 hours. For a group it depends on the size and the neighbourhoods, but the honest answer is days, not weeks, provided we know the dates and the headcount. The earlier you tell us, the more choice you keep over where people end up. If you are not sure which areas suit, our neighbourhood guide is a good place to start.

One contact. One invoice. An apartment ready in 48 hours.

The companies that do this well are not the ones with the thickest relocation policy. They are the ones who sort housing first, let the paperwork run in parallel, and give their people a real place to be while it all settles. The rest tends to sort itself out over coffee, in the neighbourhood, in the first fortnight.