The Hidden Costs & Risks of in House Shredding

In a world filled with identity theft and business fraud, it is vital to destroy old documents which may contain confidential information. Most paper shredding processes, however, turn out to be inefficient and unsafe. Here we highlight the hidden costs and risks of in-house shredding.

In-house shredding is time-consuming

Using your own employees to shred old documents would seem to make sense and save money. In practice, however, it ends up increasing labour costs and decreasing staff efficiency.

Staff have to take time away from work to destroy files, and in the process, are unable to perform their work which actually generates revenue for your company. Employees must remove staples, paper clips and rubber bands from files before shredding. Sheets of paper often need to be hand-fed into the shredder and the shredder has to be emptied on a regular basis straight into general waste.

Even without a paper jam or other maintenance issues, shredding a single file can take several minutes. Over time, an in-house shredding program ends up costing your company much more than the purchase price of the office shredding equipment.

An outsourced and professional shredding service can help your organisation stay productive and profitable by handling the shredding on your behalf. Instead of standing over a shredding machine feeding in pages, your employees can quickly deposit old files into secure destruction collection containers and get back to work.

Documents aren’t destroyed on time

Considering how much time it takes to shred in-house, it is always a possibility that the odd file could be missed and when your confidential business information isn’t destroyed promptly, it creates a whole other level of risk for your company.

The Data Protection Act requires timely document disposal. A key requirement of the law is, “Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or purposes.”

Failure to comply can result in criminal prosecution and or monetary penalties of up to £500,000. Unfortunately, many in-house disposal methods do not ensure timely and thorough disposal of confidential data, which can lead to non-compliance issues for your business.

Office shredders don’t destroy confidential documents beyond recognition

Office paper shredders actually create more risks than you would expect. Most paper shredding machines don’t sufficiently destroy confidential documents beyond recognition. Once shredded the paper is often put into the general waste stream which is then sent to landfill. Often thieves will pick up bags full of shredded material from a waste bin, and use computer programs to reconstruct the documents.

With a professional paper shredding service, however, the risk of destroying sensitive information with a paper shredding machine is eliminated. Secure, locked collection consoles take the place of shredding machines in your office.

On a scheduled or “as-needed” basis, professional document technicians collect your document containers and all material inside is destroyed with industrial-grade shredding equipment. Professional shredders render your information unidentifiable and impossible to reconstruct.

In-house shredding programs lack verification processes

Your company may have to prove it is compliant with legal information protection requirements. A shredding machine does not provide any proof that data has been destroyed. At Yorshred we provide a Certificate of Destruction noting the time and date of shredding at the completion of every service.

Don’t wait until a privacy breach has occurred to upgrade your document disposal procedure. Now is the perfect time to replace your costly and high-risk in-house shredding programme with a secure, reliable and cost-effective professional document destruction solution.