What Is Business Shredding?
There is not a proprietor, partnership or corporation that does not need document shredding services. But what are document shredding services? It is the process where an entity hires an outside vendor to securely destroy company records when they have been deemed no longer of value to that entity.
How Long Should Your Business Keep Records?
This is an easy question but not an easy answer. The IRS has guidelines and there are also industry specific recommendations for retention of records. Your best course of action is to develop a document retention schedule with your account and lawyer.
Why You Need To Securely Destroy Documents
Even though a document may be of no further importance to you it does not mean that the information should not be protected. There is a Federal and State Privacy Law that applies to every business and those laws require you to dispose of those documents in a manner that are reasonable and appropriate to prevent the unauthorized access to or use of that information. That means paper shredding. Since more than half of all documents created and received in a business contain protected information the safest course of action is to have a “Shred All Policy”. It’s not just compliance with privacy laws that it’s prudent to shred all documents but also to avoid the loss in the trust of your clients if their information were to be breached. Such a loss in confidence may never be regained which could cause you to lose customers or worse put you out of business.
What are You Currently Doing to Shred Documents?
DIY Shredding – If you are destroying documents in house with a small personal shredder you are going to be surprised to learn that this is costing you more money than if you hired a professional document destruction service. Those small units can only destroy a few sheets of paper at a time and require a lot of prep work like removing staples and paper clips. Think of all of the wasted employee time expended to remove staples and sit there and feed a small machine instead of doing more productive things for your company that generate revenue. Not to mention what member of your staff would enjoy doing such a time consuming repetitive task.
As An Alternative Consider Outsourcing To A Document Shredding Company
A professional document destruction company will get the job done in a fraction of the time it takes to do it in-house and for substantially less in what you would pay an employee to do it. A commercial shredding truck will cut through staples, paper clips and metal binders as if they were not there. These powerful trucks can destroy up to 6,000 pounds of paper per hour. With that much power they can destroy in minutes what will take you weeks to do in house. When you outsource your paper shredding, you free up staff to contribute more to the growth of your company.
A File Purge
From time to time you are going to need to eliminate files and records that are no longer needed. This process is referred to as a file purge for businesses. A shredding service will work with you to determine the resources necessary for them to shred all the files you need to destroy. If you are in the process of identifying the files for destruction the shredding company can drop off locked containers so you can place the files in a bin once you have identified them to be destroyed.
Ongoing Document Shredding
The average company discards 45% of the documents they create every day. Add to that and other documents that need to be thrown away every day and you have a need for an ongoing document destruction program. A professional service offers what is called Scheduled Shredding. This service sets up a recurring program that comes to your office on a repeating schedule such as weekly or monthly to shred your papers. They provide you with locked containers that remain in your office and all you have to do is place any document you want to discard in one of the containers. The documents remain safe and secure until they are destroyed on your next service date.
For more information about how Time Shred Services can help your business with its document destruction needs give us a call at 855-85-SHRED (74733)
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