Document destruction is not a matter to take lightly. It can impact your business from a liability standpoint and a public relations standpoint. It can also affect your customers, clients and employees in many ways. Many companies use a secure document shredding service to make it faster and easier for employees to handle paper shredding tasks. With these services, employees simply place their to-be-destroyed item in a secure lockbox, and the paper shredding company arrives regularly to empty the box and destroy the contents. Some of these companies even offer hard drive destruction services. Many businesses have instituted specific document destruction policies in their office to ensure employees are being responsible in this area, and you may be thinking about moving forward with the creation of a policy in your office as well. If you are, consider these important points.
Provide Clear Instructions on Document Destruction and Retention
Your primary goal may be on the destruction of sensitive information through secure document shredding, but you also need to think about document retention at the same time. While you want to ensure that all documents are destroyed efficiently, you also need to ensure that they are only destroyed when they are no longer needed. Establishing specific policies for both is critical, and some companies go a step beyond this by creating a primary retention method and by establishing a dedicated person or team to destroy documents that are no longer needed.
Set Up Easy Steps for Destruction and Retention
Paper and document shredding is critical, but the steps to follow should be simple and easy to follow. If you enable all employees to destroy documentation, provide a secure lockbox on-site to make this process simple for them to follow through on. If you will have a specific person or team responsible for destroying all documents and data in your office, set up a process for these items to be stored securely until they can be reviewed by the responsible party. Thinking through the process is critical when establishing the right policy. You may consider obtaining recommendations about the processes from some of your managers or staff members who will actually be using the process in action.
Document retention and destruction go hand in hand. It is just as critical to safely store sensitive items as it is to securely destroy them when they are no longer needed. Network security may be enhanced to protect stored or saved data from falling into the wrong hands, and establishing an effective destruction policy with shredding services is necessary for the destruction aspect. By focusing your attention on the development of an effective policy, you can reduce the risk of a liability issue. You can find more info at the Shred-it website.
