Guest Blog: Six Ways to Save your Business Time and Money
By Lucinda
As a business owner, you know how important it is to ensure your investment makes a return. This can be done by periodically evaluating your operations. It is important to see if there are areas where you can improve efficiency and control costs to help your team function more productively. With that in mind, here are six cost cutting initiatives to save your business time and money.
1. Recycling
Recycling is not only good for the environment. It’s also good for your company’s bottom line and corporate social responsibility. The less material that you put in the trash container, the less your business has to spend on sanitation fees and the closer you are to having a more sustainable business. Set up recycling bins throughout your facility and label them prominently to help workers and visitors get used to separating trash from reusable materials.
2. Going Paperless
With so many documents originating in digital form for easy transmission over networks and by email, it’s a good idea to switch to a paperless office whenever possible. There are great Web based solutions that enable you to access your work from anywhere. Your company will save money on paper and ink as well as on maintenance and service fees for the printers and photocopy machines. Reducing the amount of paper you consume also saves you on storage fees as well as document destruction charges when paperwork is no longer needed.
3. Vertical Shelving
Do you really need to move to a new building? By carefully planning your office layout and identifying where you can save space, your business stands to save time and money. Vertical shelving can maximise office space and can easily fit in the smallest of spaces. Ever wondered why your desk is so big? Ensure you have small pieces of office furniture. This will enable you to re arrange your office space to allow more employees to work in the same amount of office space. This way you can avoid moving to a larger facility and paying for space you don’t necessarily need.
4. Flexi Time
If there is no real need to have all your employees work to the same exact schedule, consider giving them the option of flexi time. Giving your staff greater freedom to work around the requirements of their family makes for a happier and more productive workforce. Job satisfaction rates highly with employees and will motivate them to work more efficiently. You will see an increase in productivity and a have a happier workforce.
5. Replace Lights with LEDs
Savvy start-ups will know that a greener company is a more cost effective one. With this in mind they will want to consider replacing all incandescent lights with lower-power LED lights. LEDs require much less power and do not give off waste heat like incandescent lights They also last longer, saving your staff time in monitoring and replacing burnt out bulbs and money in the process.
6. Standing Room Meetings
Fed up of meetings that last forever? A great and different way to save time is to institute a policy of holding meetings where participants stand. Instead of letting everyone sit down and enjoy snacks while having access to distracting laptops, a standing meeting focuses people’s attention. The result is that meetings are shorter and more productive and no one has fallen to sleep in the process. The end result is that there is no need to hire out the boardroom and your team will no longer fear the dreaded word, meeting.
With increased pressure on business owners these six cost cutting initiatives are sure to positively impact your bottom line. Not only will your company save time and money by following these suggestions, you can also improve employee morale when they see how efficiently they can do their work. What’s more, by choosing environmentally friendly options to control costs, your company will look more appealing to members of the community who are interested in protecting the environment and lowering their carbon footprint. As well as potential investors looking to take your business to the next step.
Bio
As a young entrepreneur and business blogger I have developed a passion for helping small and medium sized businesses grow. I like to particularly focus on using technology and software solutions to save businesses time and money.