Experienced business owners and managers know the value of being cost-efficient and smart with how you spend your resources.

One of the biggest expenses for businesses is the cost of running an office, be it overhead, insurance, or rent costs.

The need for large offices with desks for every single employee has drastically changed, and businesses have new opportunities to lower office expenses.

In this article, we’re going to talk about the changes you can make to your work setting and drastically cut your office costs and save precious resources for your business.

Minimize your need for office space

A great way to lower your office expenses is to minimize office space when your employees aren’t using it as much.

In case more of your employees are working from home, or spend most of their time on-site, consider moving your office to a smaller space.

Downsizing the office size does not lead to a decrease in productivity, but it allows you to move your estate budget and focus resources on something worthwhile.

When you strategically downsize your office needs, you slash the costs of rent, overheads, and maintenance, gaining the opportunity to try out alternate scheduling and move to a smaller cost-efficient office in a better location.

Minimizing office space needs should be viewed as a welcome improvement to your business.

A survey by Accumulate Capital of over 500 business decision-makers in the UK found that 73% will downsize to a smaller office in the next 12 months.

They expect the move to create a more flexible workspace and save big on estate costs.

The ongoing epidemic has already sped up this trend, but use it as an opportunity to minimize your office needs and save resources.

Keep up with the power-saving tech

Keep up on power-saving solutions to reduce the amount of energy you use and save on overhead costs.

A lot of your overhead costs come from wasted energy, such as heating, lights, or electricity.

If you don’t want to pay for the resources you don’t really need, use power-saving tech and optimize your workspace.

When you’re able to fine-tune your electricity spending, you’ll be able to clear up to a third of your overhead costs, which adds up to a lot at the end of the year.

For example, you could choose to optimize your lighting to compact fluorescent bulbs and decrease your lighting electricity needs by a third every day.

They last 3 times longer than usual lightbulbs, which means you won’t have to change them as often.

If you add more power-saving tech, like motion sensors on light switches, you’ll make sure the light is never used unnecessarily and pay off your investment in months.

Some amazing power-saving solutions are available for electricity, as well as heating or air conditioning, so it’s crucial to be up to date.

Once you decide to upgrade your office, you’ll notice the savings from the next month.

Move your operations to the cloud

Cloud solutions have given businesses new opportunities to move their operations and reduce their costs.

Many businesses worldwide are already using the cloud for their daily business operations.

These cloud solutions directly affect the reason your business spends as much as it does on maintaining an office and saves you a lot of rent money.

This is a viable solution for businesses seeking to save money on maintaining large offices or storage costs. The best part is that most cloud services are free or very affordable, which means you can try them regardless of your business size.

Let’s say communication is a challenge for your team and that you pay for office space to make sure your team is present and connected during the workflow.

You can cut costs by switching to a communication cloud solution such as Slack because it allows you to communicate with everyone and channel work responsibilities.

It’s effective regardless of your team members’ locations.

Cloud is one of the greatest assets for your business if you’re looking to reduce office expenses and save big.

Sell or repurpose your office equipment

Not all equipment you have lying around your office is still useful. However, it has value as a resource you can move somewhere else.

If you’re not using any of your old equipment, it’s not bringing in any ROI and your resources are going to waste.

To get that return, sell or repurpose all the equipment that isn’t being used anymore.

By doing so, you can save your business money on unnecessary purchases and help you get the invested money back.

To have a crystal clear picture of what equipment you should sell or repurpose, you have to have an efficient tracking system in place.

This doubles down if the equipment is being used by multiple employees on multiple locations, such as company laptops, tools, or equipment.

Knowing how to use tool tracking software helps you track assets, schedule maintenance, and identify which tools aren’t used very often, so you can sell them.

If you want to lower your office expenses, consider what equipment you don’t need anymore, find a new purpose for it or sell it to get money for your next investment.

Conclusion

Adopting new habits is always strange at first, but the savings you’ll achieve are well worth the effort.

In this post, we’ve discussed some ways you can effectively lower office expenses:

  • by minimizing your office needs
  • using power-saving solutions
  • moving costly operations to the cloud
  • selling or repurposing equipment

If you follow these tips and improve your workflow, you’ll be one step closer to running a completely cost-efficient workspace.