Shredding documents is a practice most companies have incorporated into their everyday business routine. With the regulations in place established by HIPAA, proper disposal of sensitive data is vital in protecting your company and customers. The risks involved in tossing confidential material in the trash range from exposing employee information, private documents to competitors, or worse; the occurrence of identity theft.
So who’s looking after your shredding?
Often smaller companies turn to their staff to handle the task, with the use of an in-house portable shredder. Usually this method is decided upon because it’s viewed as an easier and more cost effective option; however when all things are considered, the opposite is true.
Before you settle with a do-it-yourself approach, it’s important to consider the following disadvantages that come with it:
• The task of shredding paper is not only tedious, it’s time consuming. Plus there is the task of staple removal because most portable shredders can’t process them. Hours spent shredding, means hours of lost employee productivity that could be focused on core business priorities.
• Portable shredding devices are often noisy causing a disruptive work environment; it can be difficult to focus on day to day tasks with the distraction of a shredding machine running. Such noise generally results in lowered work efficiency among staff.
• There is no guarantee that sensitive information will in fact be destroyed by the staff member in charge. It’s easy to let things slip through the cracks, and this includes mistakenly tossing away or recycling confidential papers, that should in fact be shredded.
On the flip side, consider the advantages that a Document Destruction provider can offer:
• A shredding company can provide the same service in a fraction of the time it takes to do in-house. A mobile shredding truck or off-site shredding company can handle staples, elastics or paper clips. Suddenly, internal resources are freed up and can focus solely on their job roles, contributing to the overall success of the company
• No need to organize old documents into filing boxes, or monotonously feed paper through a machine. Shred bins are provided for convenient paper disposal, where all content remains safe until it reaches capacity and requires emptying. At this point a shredding specialist will look after everything for you.
• Security risks are significantly reduced, as the process is handled by highly trained professionals only. Furthermore, following shredding, a document destruction company will provide proof of shredding with a certification of secure destruction
When you factor in the time and costs that are associated with shredding in-house, it’s much more beneficial to you financially, to outsource your shredding requirements.
