Any way you can save money for your company is usually well received. However, you will want to do this in ways which do not jeopardise your business in any way. A great way to do this is to make some changes to your office which can work in your favour, as well as save you money in the long term. In this guide, we will be talking through some easy ways which offices can save money effectively.
Sustainability
Save money and save the planet by switching out traditional lightbulbs and investing in energy saving light bulbs. There are two types of energy saving light bulbs which are currently available on the market for you to choose from. These are: compact fluorescent lights and light-emitting diode (LED). Although the actual bulbs themselves cost more to initially purchase, they will offer significant savings over their lifetime since they use up less energy and last a lot longer.
You can also opt to recycle old products used in your office and make them into new things with the same or different functions. You could even consider things like bringing in your personal coffee machine when you upgrade it from your home, as long as the old one still works.
Sometimes the design of a building can help you save money down the line. This includes having a design so that things like heating and air conditioning can heat or cool the room more effectively. (Source: KSR Architects)
Ditch Computers
Instead of offering a company laptop and having monitor-computers in the office, why not just ask the staff to bring in their company or personal laptops instead. This will also save desk space as well as save you a lot of cash on big, bulky computers that need not have a purpose, should every member of staff have their own laptop.
If it is necessary for everyone to have access to a certain software, then you must provide each team member with a compatible laptop. Whilst this is spending money, laptops are cheaper than desktop computers and it might encourage people to work from home too, making everyone more productive.
Mix up who works in the office
To save the office money, why not invite certain members of the team who have less of a hands-on role to work from home. This could be permanently, or this could be a few days a week. To make this more appealing you could even offer them the choice of when they want to work from home and when they would rather be in the office.
This will free up office space and mean that you can save money on taking up a smaller premise rather than having to have a very large office. Make sure that there is still enough space for a few extra people for when they do come in however, but you can still cut down the size of the office significantly.
Buy things in bulk
Buying things for the office in bulk can allow you to cash in on discounts. Even though this is the case, be careful what you buy in bulk as you may get carried away. Do you really need 100 file folders? If you over-buy unnecessary supplies, it can put you out of pocket. Therefore, you should evaluate what you really need plenty of to save that money for your office.
When establishing a business office, you could opt to set up a consistent purchase schedule, maybe bi-weekly or monthly, so that you are able to combine multiple purchases with the lowest delivery cost attached to it.
To keep tabs of what you have, you should make it a priority to keep an ongoing inventory of frequently used supplies. From this, you can estimate how much of any given product you will need to stay well stocked until your next purchase. This will stop you from just buying when you need it because you have not worked out how to stretch out the supplies efficiently. You will also never be under-stocked or over-stocked as a rule. This will genuinely save you money as your estimates will be more exact.
