How to Grow Your Business by Cutting Costs: It Really Can Be Done!
When you think of business growth you usually equate that with major investments of time and money. However, there actually are ways to grow your business while cutting down on costs. Oddly, it seems like the more you can cut back, sometimes the faster you can realize growth. It isn’t as difficult as you might imagine.
1. Outsourcing Can Offer Huge Savings
Outsourcing is something which many small business owners misunderstand. You will hear them say that they want to keep jobs at home in the United States but actually, outsourcing means giving jobs to US citizens. What they are referring to is something altogether different. Sending jobs abroad is called offshoring and like outsourcing, you will be contracting a team that handles literally every function within a department. The difference is that offshoring sends business abroad while outsourcing provides domestic jobs.
For example, consider the cost to a small business to hire and employ an entire HR department. However, to outsource HR functions to a highly skilled and qualified team, there is no overhead to be considered, and no benefits to be paid. Money is saved on utilities, office space and several other things such as office equipment and supplies. You can follow this link to learn more about outsourcing HR.
2.Utilize a Flex and/or Remote Workforce
While there may be some jobs that must necessarily be done at your location such as in manufacturing, other jobs can be handled from remote locations. Many office jobs fall in this category. This is something we learned out of necessity during the early days of the pandemic when much of the country was mandated to shut down.
Many employers enabled some of their teams to work from home. Typically, sales and general office staff were set up to work from home and many are still working remotely now. If you have jobs which some of your staff can handle from home part time (flex) or full-time, then think of the overhead you’ll save as mentioned above when outsourcing. These will be employees and as such they will be paid through HR as usual, but they will be working from home or another remote location.
3. Contract Freelancers
Freelancers fall somewhere in between outsourced and remote workers. These are skilled workers who are hired on a contract basis for a set time and at an agreed upon price. Sometimes engineers and other highly specialized professionals work as freelancers. While not employed by the company, they sign contracts to complete the work as specified and typically with a nondisclosure clause as well.
As you can see, there are ways to significantly cut costs in several ways while keeping the work flow going. With reduced overhead in every area of your business but all functions running as usual, you will continue to see growth while spending less and less over time. It’s an amazing concept to be able to achieve significant growth while cutting back on expenses, but it’s a reality worth looking into.
