Reasons Why Businesses Shouldn't Shred Documents Themselves Back

Businesses and important documents go hand in hand. You’ll likely fail to find a business where a consistent churn of confidential data, physical documents or piles upon piles of letters are avoided.

At some point, businesses with excessive paper trails will need to shred and dispose of those documents adequately, sufficiently and efficiently. Through this activity, great time and energy can be wasted, along with risks of insufficient shredding timescales and strategies.

If you’re a digital business, you’ll likely fail to grasp the importance of a shredding process which ranks as compliant, to adhere to and meet data protection regulations. Not only that, but ineffective shredding can pose risk for your confidential documents as a business, which could turn into fraudulent activity.

Down to these risks, here are some reasons why businesses shouldn’t shred documents themselves, along with overcoming those risks, by teaming up with professional off-site shredding services, available here at Secure Storage Services.

Businesses and shredding documents

If you run a business, you’ll likely understand the necessity to shred important and confidential documents. If you do not understand this necessity, it’s time to, as consistent shredding can help you keep organised, can help you keep on top of data, can help you reduce the risk of fraudulent activity, and can help you adhere to data protection regulations.

Reasonably, if important documents are still active, you should avoid the instant shredding of this information. Yet, once a document is inactive for some time, with little purpose to your business, choosing to shred your pile of unnecessary documentation should be your next step.

However, imaginably, this will eat up until your time and money as a business, seen as an ineffective and inefficient process. This, along with many other reasons is why businesses shouldn’t shred documents themselves.

Reasons why businesses shouldn’t shred documents themselves

There are many reasons to actively shred confidential, professional and important documents. Yet, this shouldn’t automatically indicate an in-house activity, down to the below reasons. 

The mishandling of important or confidential information

Unfortunately, down to rushed responsibilities or an ineffective shredding process, important documents can be mishandled. Business-related documents are commonly private, professional and confidential, displaying anything from customer data to financial forecasts.

By shredding those documents internally, risks of mishandled information are high, where your data may be visible to the public, competitors or regulatory bodies. Down to this, businesses shouldn’t shred documents themselves, by instead utilising highly secure processes of professional shredding services.

Insufficient timescales

Another reason why businesses shouldn’t shred their own documents is down to time. In-house shredding activities can eat up into everyday business services or responsibilities, which could in fact hinder the maintenance or growth of your business.

However, the major concern of timescales is that your shredding activity may be completed insufficiently. In most cases, important or confidential documents should be stored and organised for a number of years, depending on their value. Once those documents become inactive, it’s time to shred them to avoid confidentiality breaches and non-compliant processes.

In the midst of running a business, insufficient timescales may be experienced, where significant delays of shredding those documents may occur. Even worse, the organisation of those documents may become disordered, causing complications moving forward.

Through a professional shredding service, adequate timescales can be provided to destroy documents as soon as they become inactive, reducing a wealth of risks.

Inadequate equipment

Commonly, if you’re shredding your own documents, you’ll have the standard shredding equipment, ideal for an office space. While this equipment may be fit for purpose when considering inconsistent and sparse use, for a business with high document turnover, equipment to this size and standard will be inadequate.

This is one of the main reasons why businesses shouldn’t shred documents themselves, which you can avoid by investing in state-of-the-art shredding services, offering consistent and reliable disposal.

Costly activity

Along with costing your business time, you should avoid the self-shredding of documents down to the cost that it can incur. If you’re a business with excessive levels of a paper trail, you’ll need a dedicated team to work on the disposal of your confidential and important documents, carrying the costs linked to employment contracts. You’ll also need to invest in the runnings of shredding equipment which again can be seen as a costly, unnecessary spend.

Insufficient compliance

As a business, it’s vital that you adhere to and remain compliant of data protection regulations. This ultimately means that you will do your utmost to protect sensitive and confidential information, which is commonly part and parcel of business documentation. If you have customers, clients, investors or any form of association, it’s important that you protect their data.

Through a laid-back approach to in-house shredding, insufficient levels of compliance can be the case, where sensitive data can slip through the net. This can be detrimental as a business, which should be avoided by remaining organised, and by following shredding guidelines.

Our professional off-site document shredding services

To help businesses avoid the self-shredding of documents, here at Secure Storage Services, we specialise in off-site, compliant, confidential and reliable shredding services.

With the aim to help businesses save time, money, and remain compliant, we can offer a consistent service of document shredding, all depending on your needs and timescale. We can also work to a quick timescale, in the case of a significant backlog of documents, helping you remain organised and up to date.

Our shredding services offer significant value on a commercial scale, helping businesses from small to large sizes. We work to environmental agency requirements and legislations and in turn data protection policies.

Through our services, you can feel reassured that your paper trail is being dealt with adequately, efficiently and confidentially, offering a convenient service to meet your needs.

Above are the reasons why businesses shouldn’t shred documents themselves. Combined with our services, you’ll experience significant value by handing over your ongoing shredding activity, along with additional activities, on an optional basis, including document storage and scanning.

Reach out today to arrange the shredding of your confidential and important business documents.