If you run a business, chances are good that over the course of a year you throw away a great deal of once significant paperwork. Time cards, accident reports, health records, client contact information, financial records… all of it is either stored or tossed aside, and though there probably isn’t an organized industry in this world which has not become somewhat computerized, these paper artifacts remain. If you don’t have a massive filing system on site you’ll probably want to jettison a lot of it sooner rather than later, so that an influx of paper is not allowed to build up and create and overly cluttered environment. However, you should know that simply throwing this paper away could prove to be a huge mistake. The US Supreme Court has decreed that a piece of information which is thrown away is no longer under the ownership of the company that once possessed it. In other words, should an unsavory third party, the competition or even identity thieves, gain access to it, they can use that information in any way they wish. As such, it is in the best interests of you and your clients for you to shred any and all sensitive documents before you throw them away.
Now, you could simply shred the documents themselves, but this opens you up to a whole host of potential problems. You may be an expert in a whole host of fields, but chances are good that paper shredding is not one of them, and yes, there is most definitely a way to shred paper well. When documents are not cut as finely as they should be or mixed as thoroughly as they optimally would be you run the risk of leaving behind not a truly destroyed document, but a puzzle. If you shred without care your documents can be reassembled, and they can still be read. Also, most businesses run through a great deal of documentation. Shredding all of that paper, especially doing so with any sort of care, could be highly time consuming, not to mention the office-disrupting noise, the safety concerns or the constant worry that the whole thing will be destroyed because someone forgot to remove a paper clip or two. So if you want to save yourself time, money and hassle while ensuring that the documents you shred will be 100% unreadable, you need to call a professional shredder. Here are a few other reasons why doing so would certainly be worth your time.
- Your clients trusted you with their confidential information. Allowing it to slip into the wrong hands could potentially ruin your company’s reputation, plus it could be absolutely disastrous for your former clients. It is imperative to destroy any and all information you required of them, whether you feel it is sensitive or not. Better to be safe than to be sorry.
- Not shredding your documents can provide your competition with an unfair and incredibly powerful advantage. The more they learn about the inner workings of your company the more able they’ll be to counterbalance your movies with decisions of their own. The last thing you want to do is to reveal your game plan to your competitors. Simply don’t allow it to happen by shredding any and all significant documents.
- You don’t want to load your employees down with a lot of pointless busywork. They work hard enough already, and if you ask them to spend hours shredding papers on top of the work you originally hired them to do, their overall job performance may begin to slip. Plus, give your clients important documents to destroy, and they may eventually see what’s on them, either accidentally or on purpose. This scenario could be particularly problematic if the papers contain payroll data or refer to legal/personal issues among the other employees.
- Most shredders simply aren’t up to the task of destroying a huge amount of paper at once like the machines owed and operated by shredding companies can. This is one of the reasons why the process takes so much longer if such a company is not called. Office-based shredders are also very limited in the type of media they can destroy. Most reputable shredding services will have the resources to carry out a diverse number of tasks, destroying everything from paper to computer discs to film, as well as whatever else you might need. Simply put, their machines are far more efficient, and far more effective.
- Even if you manage to shred a huge amount of documents on your own, what’s your next step? Where do you go from there? One of the main advantages of hiring a shredding service is the fact that they will transport your paper every step of the way. First, the paper is collected in bins which are placed throughout the office. These bins can either be picked up by the service of your choice or dropped off at their location. From there, the paper is shredded, and once that step is complete, it is consolidated and securely recycled. By the end of the process, your former documents become unrelated paper goods bearing none of their former marks. There’s no more secure way to handle old documents than that.
- Perhaps most importantly of all, it’s the law. As mentioned earlier, once you throw a piece of paper away it is no longer considered to be your property. Therefore, the information it contains can be legally used by any third party. However, that law is superseded by several others which dictate that businesses must destroy documents containing sensitive information before they are allowed to throw them away. Hypothetically, you could be sued for allowing someone to steal your identity, or the identities of your clients. That’s nothing less than an extremely unpleasant situation.
In the end, you could try to shred your businesses’ documents yourself, but why risk it? It’ll take far longer, it’ll be an unnecessary hassle on several levels, and it’ll be less secure. Instead, call a professional shredding company and tell them precisely what you need. Their services don’t stop at the destruction of documents. They’ll take care of whatever you need, and they’ll do it as securely as is humanly possible. So why second guess yourself? Why give yourself unnecessary worry? Why not make that call today?