Paperless Office-Not So Fast

hard drive on pile of shredded microchips

Paperless Office-Not So Fast

Document shredding services is an important service for every business in Connecticut!

The paperless office is a goal but it is a long way off.  The actual use of paper is growing each year not decreasing here’s why.

  • The average office employee uses 10,000 pieces of paper per year.
  • The average document is copied 9 to 11 times
  • The average businesses paper usage grows at 22% per year

These numbers show that paper is still a main ingredient in the operation of the average business.  Your paper documents are extremely important for you to carry out the day to day tasks that are essential for your business to function properly.

In the normal course of your business you throw away many of the documents you use every day.  The average business tosses away a staggering 45% of the documents they create on that very same day.  That is a tremendous amount of paper for any business regardless of their size.

Here is one more important statistic that is very sobering, of all the documents you use every day half of them have information on them that federal and state privacy laws require they be destroyed before they are discarded so the information on them is not accessible, that means shredding.

How do you evaluate the documents to decide what needs to be shredded.  The answer is you don’t.  You need to have a “Shred All Policy”.  The reasons are simple;

  • The time to review and separate documents is tremendous.
  • There is a great likelihood you could make a mistake and put a document with protected information on it in the regular trash thereby creating a data breach and violating privacy laws.

Scheduled Shredding Services is the answer

To get your staff on board with a Shred All Policy it has to be made easy for them.  Here is how you do that.  Hire a professional document shredding service. They will provide security containers to be placed in your office so your staff can dispose of paper records in them instead of a waste basket used for regular trash.  Then the document destruction company will come to your Connecticut office to empty and shred the papers on a regular basis.  Be sure to have a consistent schedule so your employees are aware of when documents are being shredded.  The more they know and the more convenient it is for them the more likely they are to be onboard with the policy and the less likely you will have a violation in your Shred All Policy.

Have a Written Information Destruction Policy

Put your Shred All Policy into a written document.  Then give a copy to each member of your staff.  Go over it with them and let them know how important it is.  Have them sign an acknowledgement that they have been provided a copy of the policy and read it.  This will reinforce the policy and help you be compliant with some of the components of the privacy laws that apply to your business.

One last benefit of shredding all of your paper business records, it’s good for the environment.  All of your shredded documents are recycled and used to make other paper products.  Just one ton of recycled shredded paper will save 17 trees.  Paper represents 35% of municipal hard waste so document shredding will help reduce this.

To get more information about setting up an ongoing document shredding service for your business give FileShred a call of visit our website at www.fileshred.net .