The energy crisis in the UK has been dominating the headlines recently. With the price of energy rapidly rising, how can small and medium businesses stay on top of the rising costs? Take a look at some of our advice below.
There are many ways to limit your use of energy without it causing an impact on your business. Adopting new habits such as fully turning off your devices instead of leaving them on standby, or making sure to turn off the lights in unused rooms, can really make a difference to your energy use. The best thing about these new habits is that they are free to implement and can even push your organisation to adopt better and more efficient business practices.
Other options to conserve your use of energy involve making a short-term investment, but for long-term savings. Upgrading your appliances to ones with higher power efficiency ratings and changing your lightbulbs for more economical ones can help your business save money in the long run. Whilst these incur instant costs to the business, they will undoubtedly help to minimise costs for the future.
As well as helping to save costs, reducing your energy usage will also cause your Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) to reduce. This carries not only a monetary and ethical advantages, but it also gives a good impression of your business to customers and clients. The Carbon Trust survey revealed that 55% of its participants surveyed would be more loyal to a brand if it made steps to offset its carbon footprint. As a result, there is not much to lose from being smarter with your energy use. Check out our previous blog post about making your workplace environment more sustainable.
Managing your employees may not seem like it would make a large impact when discussing the cost of energy rising, but surprisingly there are many things you can change in your management that can have an effect.
If you have a flexible or hybrid working schedule, try and organise the days your employees are in the office to match up. By doing this, you will have days and times where you will no longer need to heat up the office space and have appliances running! In addition, if you have an open-plan office space, try to encourage your staff to work in closer proximity so that the heating will not need to be spread out across the entire office.
Whilst the biggest rise of costs will be coming from the energy price increases, this does not mean this is the only place you can economise. A good place to start is to review your company’s outgoing expenses and evaluate which ones you need to keep, and which can be cancelled. For example, your company may be subscribed to a media platform no longer used, or still pays for newspaper deliveries your employees no longer require. In any case, by removing these expenses you are ensuring the business has more funds available to combat the price increase.
Save on costs for paper and ink by moving away from paper-based office communication. You can also look into going online with your admin and processes, such as using an all-in-one HR software or online learning platforms for business compliance. As well as cutting down on unneeded physical resources, you will be moving to a much more efficient and productive method of office and staff management.
Alongside all the above possibilities to conserve your energy use and costs, the government also have initiatives available to help such as the Energy Bill Relief Scheme.
7 simple ways to create a more sustainable work environment
The 7 best HR cost-cutting strategies for small businesses
How can employers address the cost of living crisis?