How to Create a Paper Shredding Strategy for Remote Workers
During 2020, the number of businesses switching to remote work, or working from home, rose to a new all-time high. Although remote work saved peoples jobs and made it possible to work during a pandemic, the new work environment comes along with new security risks. It’s important to put together a plan to help protect sensitive information and important documents. The key to document security is proper destruction of old paper documents, which means your remote workers need a paper shredding strategy, similar to one made in a traditional office.
What Is A Paper Shredding Strategy?
A paper shredding strategy is a plan for effectively and securely shredding old paper documents that contain sensitive information. This may seem simple, but with the amount of paperwork a typical office-setting goes through, piles and piles of old documents containing sensitive information can pile up, which means the risk of mishandling information goes up as well. With a paper shredding strategy, the risk of sensitive information being lost or stolen goes down drastically.
The three questions that should be answered when planning a paper shredding strategy is:
- Where should the documents be stored?
- Where can you go paperless?
- When should I arrange shredding?
With this in mind, let’s breakdown how a paper shredding strategy would look for remote working.
- Where Should the Documents Be Stored?
With employees in a typical office setting, this question is easily answered. With employees now working remotely, this brings new challenges. It’s important to have a clear protocol that is easily followed by any of your employees, no matter where they’re working remotely from. At Patriot Shredding, we offer small, lockable containers made to hold paper that needs to be shredded. Some other solutions to this could be a small, locked file box, a safe, or a locked desk drawer.
- Where Can You Go Paperless?
A lot of businesses have slowly been switching over to paperless, so maybe it’s time to reevaluate business practices and switch some paper documents to online and become “paperless”. Whenever possible, make important, sensitive documents online and paperless, that way your remote employees don’t have to worry about physically handling any sensitive data.
- When Should I Arrange Shredding?
Once your remote workers have a secure place to store those confidential documents that aren’t able to go paperless, now it’s time to determine when these documents should be shredded. It’s not a good idea to leave it up to your employees to shred documents remotely, therefore it’s best to arrange professional shredding services.
For how often you should receive document shredding, contact a trustworthy paper shredding company, like Patriot Shredding, and let them know what size container your employee has. They will be able to give a recommended schedule for how often document shredding is needed. This way, there’s peace of mind that documents are being securely destroyed without the hassle of keeping track of who destroyed what and when. And with shredding services such as on-site shredding, your solution to securely destroying documents can go right to your remote workers door. Find more information on how to help your remote workers shred here.
Once you have a paper shredding strategy in place, you’ll give your remote employees the tools they need to safely and responsibly handle secure documents. Patriot Shredding provides fully secure, reliable, & cost effective data destruction solutions throughout DC, Maryland, & Virginia. We’re ready and available to work with you and your remote workers to securely destroy all of our sensitive information. Contact Patriot Shredding today to see how we can serve you or your business.
article source: shredyuma.com
