After spending over a year working from home, many businesses are beginning to open their office doors to employees, welcoming them back after their extended stretch working from home.
The pandemic affected businesses in a multitude of ways. For most businesses, adapting to remote working was one of the main obstacles they had to tackle this past year. Finding an efficient way to operate and commute, whilst their entire team was trying to be productive at home.
In terms of how businesses performed over the past year, the pandemic caused many companies to soar in success, gaining more clients and were busier than ever before. Unfortunately for others, the pandemic had the opposite effect, causing some businesses to reduce their workforce and a few firms to close.
There are two ways to increase profitability at your business: increase your revenue and minimize your costs. Whilst the first way, increasing revenue, might be an obvious factor in boosting your company’s profitability, minimizing costs is often overlooked. Minimizing business costs does not necessarily mean reducing team size, there are other areas in your company that have avoidable costs.
Why You Should Consider Cutting Business Costs
For businesses that are struggling financially, implementing changes to the company that will reduce costs are an essential step to help them stay in business. However, even if you are a thriving business, that is financially stable, applying changes to help cut any unnecessary costs comes with many benefits.
There is a vast range of changes that can be implemented to help a business cut costs. These changes are both internal alterations that can be made, as well as external ones too.
4 Ways To Reduce Internal Business Costs
- Go Paperless– If you find yourself printing copies of meeting minutes, company updates or information packs for your employees, you might notice that you notice that you are spending a considerable amount on paper and ink each month. It might be worth switching to sending PDFs of information packs, meeting minutes or company updates via email. This helps you to reduce the amount of paper waste your company creates, as well as the total spent on printing supplies.
- Switch To A Virtual Office– This past year has tested employees’ ability to be productive whilst working at home. It proved to many businesses that their employees were capable of working from the comfort of their own home. If you are only a small business whose work is solely online, you might consider not having an office and keep your team working from home for the foreseeable future.
- Reduce Office Size– If a virtual office is not an option as you require the physical space of an office, opt for a smaller office. Allows employees who do not wish to return to the office and would prefer to continue working from home to do so. With this reduced number of employees in the office, means that you can find a smaller space to operate from. This allows you to cut costs on paying for unused space.
- Look Into Energy Efficient Appliances– One of the costliest aspects of running a business are the utility bills for an office space. Consider switching to energy-efficient appliances. For example, swap regular light bulbs for fluorescent light bulbs. Whilst they do cost more than regular light bulbs, in the long run, they function longer, save your business money in utility costs, and helps in the fight against climate change. An additional bonus to using energy-efficient appliances, it shows potential employees that your company is environmentally friendly – a factor many candidates are looking for in a business.
External Options For A Cost-Effective Business
- Consider Outsourcing Customer Services– Managing your time is equally as important as generating revenue for your company. There is only so much you are capable of providing to clients before you have reached your limit. As such, it might be worth outsourcing your customer services. For instance, outsource customer service to the Philippines is becoming increasingly popular, with many large businesses making the switch to outsourcing their customer services. This is because firms can pass them more time-consuming tasks, like filing documents. With more important work, they will pick the task back up and complete it.
- Cut Advertising Costs By Going Online – Online advertising is one of the most effective ways to promote your business. In comparison to traditional forms of marketing, advertising your business online allows you to achieve results faster and at a lower cost. The results online marketing can attain for your business is remarkable, helping you to generate larger traffic to your website and gain new customers.
- Switch To Virtual Landlines– Having a traditional landline for your company is not only expensive but it could also be an unnecessary cost that your business is paying for. There are many businesses, both small and large, that have switched the traditional landline to a virtual phone line. Making this switch has enabled them to reduce some of their business costs.
- Negotiate Prices And Ask For Discounts – Although it could be a time-consuming task, you should negotiate with wholesalers, office supply companies, manufacturers, distributors, and other supply chains on reducing their fees or asking for better pricing. It may take time in the beginning, but it could save your company a considerable amount.
Reduce Your Costs, Keep Morale High
Creating a positive working environment that is productive and motivates employees is something countless businesses strive to achieve. One of the ways businesses try to achieve this is by offering employee perks to their employees. The employee perks do not need to be grand schemes that are costly to the business. There can be small changes such as finishing an hour early or switching paying for lunch to buying them coffee. Alternatively, look at the benefits currently on offer to employees and see which ones are being fully utilized by most employees. If there is one that is barely being used, consider either removing it or swapping it for something that your employees have expressed an interest in.
Aside from boosting morale amongst employees, finding cheaper alternatives for employee benefits will help to reduce costs within your business. Which can be used to help further grow the business in the years to come.
