So you have successfully booked a one-time document purge for your business records. You did your research and figured out who the best shredding service provider in your area is. Now you have to make sure you’re prepared for your scheduled shredding time. We’ve broken it down to these four simple steps to ensure your document purge strategy goes off without a hitch.
1. Ensure You Comply with Retention Laws
Before you even consider shredding any of your business documents, make sure you have a complete understanding on local and federal document retention laws. Laws like HIPAA and FACTA strictly regulate how long you must have access to specific details. Make sure you take the time to understand every regulation that applies to your business and keep track of your information accordingly. Once you know what you can shred and what you need to retain, it’s time for step two.
2. Train Your Employees
Once you understand what needs to be done, make sure your entire team knows as well! Keeping a secure hold on your information is a company effort. Every employee needs to understand what is expected of the documents that they print out or write up. Implement procedures that explain which documents should be stored and which ones need to be shredded immediately. This may very well be the most important step on this list, so make sure you are thorough and address any concerns your employees have. Now you’re ready to move on to the next step.
3. Collect & Prepare Your Documents Beforehand
Give yourself ample time before your document purge to collect all the documents that need to be shredded. This is a process that you do not want to rush. The last thing you want to do is accidentally forget to shred something, or worse, lose a document completely. A lost document becomes a huge liability for your business, so take extra care!
As far as preparing your documents are concerned, there is actually very little that you need to do. Shred trucks like ours are powerful enough to shred through any staples or clips that might be attached to your records, so there’s no need to remove these like you would with an in-house shredding solution.
With that out of the way, it’s time to proceed to step four.
4. Keep Them Ready & Secure
When you collect your documents, make sure you have a clearly designated area for those documents to be kept until shredding day. A secure shred bin is the perfect place to store these documents, since they are locked and the documents can’t be easily accessed once deposited. Utilize our short-term console service to get access to one of our secure 65 gallon bins to hold your documents.
However you decide to store them, make sure they are accessible when the shred truck driver comes to collect them. If you want the least amount of friction for your office, then you should think strategically as to where the best place to keep these records would be.
Now we’re ready for the final, bonus step. Don’t worry, it’s a good one.
5. Sit Back and Relax!
Now that the day has arrived, all that’s left to do is watch! Your documents will be handled in a secure fashion and taken out to the on-site shredding truck. Your documents will be loaded, shredded, and stored into the back of the truck in a matter of moments. The remaining pieces of paper will be completely unrecognizable, ensuring any information is unreadable. When you use a trusted shredding provider like Security Shredding, you’ll also get a Certificate of Destruction proving your compliance with proper data destruction.
If you haven’t already scheduled your one-time document shredding appointment, now is the perfect time! We make sure you will get the best customer service in the industry at competitive rates.
Contact us today by phone or email to get a free estimate!
