Research shows that an average US office worker utilizes more than 100 pounds of paper every year for different office tasks. Now imagine the amount of paperwork that would be used by a company that employs 100 workers or more. The number of payroll designations, legal documents, social security numbers and other essential notes that are printed in a building in one year is just mind-boggling.

As businesses turn to much greener options such as using email and word processing more, it is becoming ever so important to get rid of paper-based documents. However, simply tossing the trove of paperwork in dustbins exposes a company to imminent risks such as identity theft or the records getting to your competitor. Thus, the best thing to do to clean the house is to shred the papers. If your company is found to have violated consumer privacy laws, it could be faced with stiff fines. You also must have a plan of safely purging office documents.

Should you hire a paper shredding company or should you conduct it in-house?<

There are basically two options of disposing paper-based documents. The first one is to buy shredder and have the documents destroyed in-house. The other option involves hiring a company that specializes in document destruction to ensure safe purging of your documents. So which is the best method you should use? Read why it is in the best interest of your company to hire a licensed and fully bonded company to be in charge of destroying your documents.

Ways in which your company will benefit if you hire professional document shredding company

1. Ensures your business is complaint<

Your company size notwithstanding, there are high chances that you have in your possession documents that have vital information. HIPAA and FACTA acts require that you securely destroy data if you want to dispose of used business documents. Failure to shred these documents puts your firm at a risk of data breach. It also increases the instances of identity theft. For most people, the easier option is to toss them in a trash bin. This, if discovered, could put you in trouble with the law. It is not just worth it.

2. Professional shredding company protects the integrity of your information<

By entrusting the destruction of your company documents to one of your staffs, you risk running into even bigger problems. To start with, document destruction is a tedious task and can be easily forgotten. Also, it reduces instances of document leaks. The office shredder will not give you the professionalism and security that a professional Tampa Shredding company like Legal Shred< would offer. Such a company will also provide you with Certificate of Destruction which gives you further peace of mind and guarantee that your data have been destroyed completely.

3. Cost-effective<

One benefit of outsourcing paper shredding is that leaves your employees to focus on their core competencies. By its very nature, paper shredding consumes a lot of time. This is even worse if you have lots of documents that need to be shredded. Also, hiring a professional shredding company ensures prevents you from repair or replacement costs should the office shredder not work. It also saves time because a professional data shredding company can destroy the documents in minutes. Since you can save time, it is also likely that you will save money.

4. It makes shredding a breeze<

If you were to use an office document shredder, it will require that staples and paperclips as well as other materials are removed before the papers can be fed through a shredder. As you can see, this can sometimes be very aggravating and even lead to jams should it be ignored. But a document destruction company makes document shredding to be very easy. It does not require the removal of staples and paperclips. Also, the company provides you with a secure place where your documents will be stored prior to shredding. A good company will always ensure that it gives your business lockable and safe shred bins where your sensitive data will be stored before being destroyed.

These shred containers provide additional measures to ensure that your sensitive information is safeguarded. This way, you will not need to fret about your documents being lost or stolen. If the containers are full, all you have to do is to call the shred company and they will send one of their staffs to your office to destroy the documents. You get to choose the time that is most appropriate for you. Even you like, you may also use off-site shredding services. In this case, the vital documents will be moved to another secure shredding facility.

5. You get to enjoy other services<

Many professional document shredding companies will offer additional records and documents management solutions besides document shredding. You could take advantage of an array of storage and scanning services that are offered all by one company. If you use one company for all these services, chances are that you might get a discount.

Documents that need to be shredded

It is against the law for not shredding certain documents over time as this violates the law. If you fail to secure private information, you will be going against the Privacy Act. The following are the main documents that you must ensure that are shredded over time. Otherwise, you will be risking prosecution.

• Visitor Logs
• Accounting Data
• Drafts of Contracts
• Banking documents and information
• Payroll Information
• Cancelled checks
• Sales Call Reports
• Phone Messages
• Employee Information like SSN numbers

Conclusion<

Your business certainly has important and sensitive information that has the potential of costing your company substantially should it land on the wrong hands. Thus, it is very important that you find proper ways of storing or even destroying information that is most confidential to your business. However, it is almost impossible to store highly sensitive data. Destroying such documents is the safest way to ensure that they do not land into the wrong hands. Also, the law requires that you protect your employees’ private information. If it gets into the wrong hands, you could be in trouble with the law. A data shredding company offers you the best way to dispose of these records.