This article is not about the suppliers that provide your business with the product that it sells. It is designed to help business owners look beyond their product and more deeply into how the business is being run. Other supplies your business needs to operate include stationery, IT suppliers, as well as cleaning and hygiene peripherals. It these items that make your business open on a day to day basis and help your business operate smoothly.
First of all, we are going to build a picture of how constantly running short on supplies that are vital to your employees in order to properly do their job can be overlooked causing discontent among your workforce. You can then keep a close eye on your business and decide if these are issues you may have disregarded. Secondly, we offer advice on how to put the flaws in your business supplies right.
Examples Of What Happens When Business Supplies Run Short
Let’s look at it in another way. Could you imagine if your business had no pens or paper? Now your employees would probably end up going out and making the purchase themselves, but this doesn’t exactly set the tone for creating a happy workplace.
Printer and photocopiers with empty paper, no notepads, or anything to write on may unintentionally create a paperless workplace, but it also creates tension among those employees that like to complain – and complaining can be contagious. See this report about the cost of employee disengagement to understand how you should be doing everything you can to avoid a toxic environment among employees in your company.
Some businesses regularly experience these problems 2 or 3 times a month. Employees start to feel the managers don’t care and the company is not professionally run. This gives them an excuse to slack off thus reducing their productivity, which negatively reduces the business’s efficiency.
Another area of the business that is overlooked is general hygiene supplies. Paper towels, liquid soaps, dishwashing liquid for tea and coffee cups plus plates if your business has a kitchen or eating area, kitchen cloths, and so on. Once again, if the supply of these items is ignored you can imagine how unhygienic the work areas can get.
Have You Built A Picture Yet?
Hopefully, we have built a picture in your head of just how important it is to task someone in your business to make sure hygiene and stationery are dealt with. Now, this may feel like you are taking their time up on tasks that do not feel as if they are business critical. However, you couldn’t be more wrong.
If there are people assigned to these tasks, then why are they not able to do their job properly? Is it because they need to go out of the office and buy these items themselves? Or is it because there is not enough petty cash?
The simple solution is to hire a professional supplies company that will deliver stationary and hygiene products directly to your office. Make sure the supplier offers free delivery too as there are plenty of suppliers that offer this service.
You should be able to open a monthly account with these suppliers who will invoice you at the end of every month. This solves all the questions asked above. There is no need for someone to go out of the office to buy more stationary or hygiene equipment or products. Plus, the lack of petty cash will not be a problem anymore.
Last, of all, your employees will never run out of stationary, and you have provided them with a hygienic and healthy business environment to work in. This stops complaining and will give your business that extra edge that it may have been missing.
