If there’s one cost-saving pursuit that seems tremendously disproportionate to its savings in terms of benefits, it’s micromanaging the use of and access to office supplies.
Let’s say that, it terms of salary and benefits, your average office worker costs $100,000 per year. Assuming two weeks vacation, that employee spends about 2000 hours in the office. That’s $50 per hour.
Now let’s say that an average employee uses 4 reams of paper per year (at about $12), an entire toner cartridge worth $31, and 5 fairly nice office supply cabinet pens worth $15. I’m making these numbers up, but I think they’re fairly reasonable upper limits for the average employee.
If you have 1000 employees using this much in office supplies, is it really worth devoting a major portion of any worker’s time to more effective management of office supplies? Do you really need a gatekeeper? Are you afraid your employees having being stealing office supplies so that they can retire early?