Overheads can be the downfall of a business. If they are too high the business will fail, even if they have done more sales than ever before. Most of us look to save money on our household bills, so why not do the same for the costs of running your office? Just saving a bit here and there can amount to a lot in total over a year and can mean the difference between a profit or a loss on your bottom line.
Go Paperless
Keeping hard copies of everything is costly and time-consuming. There is not just the expense of the paper. There are the printer cartridges to consider and the costs of the printers themselves. Then you have employees waiting around for things to print off, and that affects productivity levels.
Then up until fairly recently, the answer would have been to save everything on your computers and do regular backups so that nothing is lost. Using emails for staff to communicate work between them was the usual way for companies that had gone digital, but now that has all changed.
Managed cloud solutions are the latest innovation that allows you to forget the backups, and you and your staff to be viewing the same thing at the same time. The savings of using cloud computing, in time and money, can be significant, which is why more businesses than ever are turning to this option.
Shut Things Down
Every piece of equipment that is left in sleep-mode overnight will be adding to your energy costs. From fax machines to computers, and coffee machines to air conditioners, they should all be turned off completely overnight. Each item on its own may only cost a few cents a day in this mode, but just look around your office and see how many pieces of electrical equipment you have, and then you may realize that over a year the saving could be a lot of money.
Change Your Lighting
Most offices started out with incandescent light bulbs and then came along florescent ones. These were cheaper to run if you could stand the constant flickering and buzzing from them. Certainly, they were not good for people who suffer from epilepsy. Now there are LED lights. These are cheaper to run, do not cause any flickering or any noise. They last for anything up to 10 years and when they do need replacing are more environmentally friendly. Less running cost and less maintenance has to make them worth installing.
Speak With Your Employees
Speak with your employees about cutting costs. They may well spot things that you wouldn’t and they will want to safeguard their jobs too. It is them that are doing most of the work, and it is them that will know of any way that production costs or overheads could be cut even further.
They may well appreciate that you are asking for their input, as that shows how much you value them as employees. That is always good for morale and could save you even more money.