A new subscription service offers employers the opportunity to order online to have the office supplies their staff need delivered directly to them each month.
OfficeTeam has launched the service in response to the pandemic-driven shift to homeworking. It says the service brings the popular online subscriptions model to office supplies for the first time – and that it enables businesses to control the total costs in a way that they cannot when staff order their own goods and claim reimbursement via expenses.
It says even the cost of processing an expense claim adds up, to an average of £27.40, while frequent deliveries take a toll on the environment. Using a subscription service, employers can instead preapprove a list of supplies to be delivered once a month, with only one consolidated invoice to be processed.
Andrew Jones, incoming chief executive of OT Group, OfficeTeam’s parent company, says: “We constantly listen to feedback from our customers and the wider industry and try to find ways to help solve their problems through service innovation. It has been clear to us for many months that out-of-control supply costs caused by home working as resulted in an expensive headache for many businesses.
“This subscription model will not only make employees’ lives easier in the day-to-day, ensuring that they have everything they need to fulfil their role, but will also create efficiencies of scale for organisations who are now inundated with expense forms as staff purchase their own, non-approved, workplace items.”
Employers using the OfficeTeam service can choose from three levels of subscription: essential supplies, a print service, and an executive pack that includes everything needed to kit out a home office, including furniture and technology.
IOD research suggests that 74% of businesses will continue to support staff working from home after the Covid-19 pandemic.
