Eliminating the hidden costs of your business

Survive 2025 by cutting costs

For many companies, 2025 may be all about survival. It may be crucial whether they will be able to rationalise costs so that their business operations are sufficiently stable from a financial point of view.

A leader's position is not easy when every one of the company's expenses has to be studied and opportunities for saving have to be found. In many cases, cutting costs back can also be painful. Beyond the obvious options, there are plenty of “hidden” costs that are not easy to spot at first glance - especially because they are not conspicuous in size, yet, on the principle that many a little makes a mickle, once added up they can amount to a significant item.

Let's look at a few examples

Every company holds all-staff briefings from time to time for various purposes. At such times work stops, since everyone attends the briefing. Colleagues drop out of the shift, which can mean a significant loss of production. Have you ever thought about how much the production loss during such a briefing actually costs the company? Let's do the maths. An average blue-collar worker's fully loaded hourly wage is at least HUF 4,000; for a half-hour briefing it costs us HUF 2,000 for them to listen to it, and for 250 employees that is already a half-million cost. If there is such a briefing only every two months, that is already HUF 3 million a year. But if the employees set off from their place of work before the briefing, then discuss what they heard a little afterwards, the loss is already closer to 1 hour, and if there is a briefing every month, then the annual cost of this is already HUF 12 million.

By contrast, if they receive the information in digitalised form, via the company's own internal communication app or Viber channel, they can read it outside working hours, at their own pace, and the hidden cost immediately evaporates.

Automated HR administration

Every employee has something to sort out, some problem to solve at the HR department. Each such occasion takes at least half an hour, counting leaving the workstation, doing the administration and returning. Let's assume that, on average, such an occasion arises twice a year; at a 250-person company that is 250 hours of lost time a year, which, calculated on the aforementioned HUF 4,000 fully loaded hourly wage, is already HUF 1 million a year - and this does not even include the HR colleague's working time.

Yet most such administration can be automated via the CHEQ digital channel. Our experience shows that among our clients who use CHEQ, companies save a significant part of the working time of the colleagues who carry out HR administration processes compared with the previously operating processes, so the remaining working time can be spent on other activities, even more creative tasks aimed at retaining the workforce more effectively.

Internal surveys

A further hidden cost is the sums spent on internal surveys, opinion research and employee satisfaction assessments. At a company employing a few hundred people, these processes too can easily reach the multi-million-forint range.

Administration costs

We can find not-so-hidden costs in the area of administration. There are many recurring documents whose mere printing, mailing and processing can add up to a significant amount over a year, in the form of material costs and working hours spent.

At a company employing 250 people or more, printing and sending out the monthly payslips can be a substantial cost. If every employee also has to return these signed to the HR department, and these then have to be filed, that increases costs with further valuable working hours. If an automated system handles all of this, and we also use an electronic signature system, the annual saving can be in the multi-million range.

Below we show a concrete example of how large a cost mass can be saved annually simply by introducing the electronic signature:

Name of item	Number of employees	Unit measure per item	Total unit measure / frequency	Total unit price
Wage of 1 HR staff member ~	1 person	HUF 450,000 (base salary)	12 months	HUF 5,400,000
Employment contracts + occupational safety + fire safety + data protection	250 people	130 pages (due to signing in 2 copies)	29,900 pages / variable	HUF 975,000
Wage-increase document	250 people	2 pages (due to signing in 2 copies)	460 pages/year	HUF 15,000
Delivering the wage-increase document for in-person signing	250 people	5,000 km	HUF 150 / km / year	HUF 750,000
Termination documentation	20 people	5 pages (due to signing in 2 copies)	100 pages / variable	HUF 3,000
Delivering the termination documentation for in-person signing	20 people	5,000 km	HUF 150 / km / variable	HUF 750,000
				HUF 7,893,000

Added to this is the process of distributing payslips, which every month ties up the administrators for several days and takes up all their working time. On top of this there is a printing cost, envelopes, delivery - individually negligible amounts, but as soon as we multiply them by several hundred employees and project them over the whole year, we arrive back in the multi-million range.

The solution: CHEQ

For these everyday HR tasks, CHEQ offers - among many others - an effective, digital solution. Corporate briefings, internal surveys, conducting satisfaction assessments, automated sending of payslips, an electronic signature system - all are part of the CHEQ service, which, in a predictable, flexible monthly-fee system, according to our clients' feedback can pay for itself as early as the third month after introduction and represents continuous, reliable cost savings in difficult times burdened with economic challenges.

How much cost reduction can CHEQ specifically achieve in your business? Request our free ROI calculator, with which you can find the effective solution to hidden administrative costs in minutes!

Are you curious which further processes CHEQ supports the digitalisation of? Take a look at our feature list!

Would you like to discuss the details with us in a meeting? 

Book an appointment or contact us at one of the details below:

Ákos Deliága, CEO

Call:  +36 70 294 0074

Write: akos.deliaga@talkabot.net

Book an appointment in my calendar HERE!

Blanka Csuti, Customer Success Manager

Call:  +36 70 790 9001

Write: blanka.csuti@cheqbot.com

Book an appointment in my calendar HERE!