Small businesses need to be creative about saving money, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cutting costs down is an essential requirement to protect your staff and keep the business afloat. Therefore, small business owners are looking at a variety of options to reduce their expenses. Remote work is not always a viable solution. As a result, many companies that didn’t perform any essential work during the crisis have been forced to shut down temporarily. Therefore, you may be tempted to delay business expenses to maximize cash flow when you’re ready to re-open for activities. For instance, business maintenance comes at a high cost when you’ve got no revenue for several weeks. However, skipping maintenance duties is a false economy that will come back to bite you in the future!
Repairs don’t come for free
Ultimately, your business relies on working equipment. If you’ve had to furlough your team for the lockdown or to reduce employee presence, chances are that your day-to-day equipment has been left untouched for several weeks. Using out-of-sync equipment or tools that might not be in sufficient working condition is going to cost you money in the long run. Corrosion, degraded machinery, devices that have not been upgraded are some of the factors that can dramatically increase your cost. For a start, without regular maintenance, your equipment might break. Additionally, injuries are more likely to happen with damaged tools. Finally, repairing damages will incur a higher cost than maintenance duty.
You put your employees at risk
We’ve just mentioned it above. Failure to maintain your equipment and workplace can lead to accidents. When your employees and customers are injured due to poor maintenance, you are likely to be found responsible for the accident, which means you will have to pay monetary compensation. Injury experts, such as Krzak Rundio Law Group, are specialized in ensuring that individuals can claim against negligent behaviors. As a company, you can’t afford to fail to maintain equipment and fleet that are in regular use without being liable for the consequences of your decision.
Can you afford a production shutdown?
How much are you likely to lose if a fault holds the production? As a rule of thumb, a single hour of downtime could cost a manufacturing business approximately $10,000 in lost revenue. When you have no choice but to be productive to recover from the COVID-19 crisis, skipping maintenance can be the last draw that drags your business down. Giving yourself the best chance to generate revenues post lockdown is detrimental to your survival.
What will the press say?
Unattended damage and issues that force a business to shut down its production line or pay compensation to workers and clients are not just bad news. They are also bad press about your brand. Boosting your reputation as a company that supports your community economy and takes part in the national effort to rebuild financial stability is the way forward out of lockdown. You can be sure that negative events caused by your negligence to maintain your equipment and workplace will reflect poorly on your reputation.
Saving money by cutting down unnecessary costs is a smart approach. However, as a business, you need to be very careful about what you perceive as unnecessary. Carrying on maintenance checks on your assets is not a luxury. It is indispensable to the survival of your company and the protection of your team. Don’t be the business that saves money by putting profits before people’s best interests.
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