| We
are coming up to the end of the year and the time when many
of us look to clean out the clutter in the office. It may
be just to fill the time during the slow holiday week but
it can also be an opportunity to practice good document retention
practices.
Most offices have a retention policy for official
company records, i.e. tax returns, employee files and bank
statements. These documents are carefully filed and stored
neatly in boxes in a storage area or at an offsite storage
facility. Each box is labeled with the owner and the year
of the document. Every year a shredding service comes in and
shreds the outdated records.
This is a great system for the official company
documents but what about the secondary records in the office?
Secondary records are everything that employees keep stashed
away in their desks and in filling cabinets around the office.
They can be customer lists, memos, printouts or even copies
of official company records. It is these records that make
up the bulk of the documents an office produces.
Don't think you need to worry about these
old meeting minutes and customer lists? Don't forget that
if you allow your employees to treat this information as trash
you have no legal recourse under Corporate Espionage Act if
it is given or sold to your competitors. It is also these
documents that show up at the most inopportune times. Disgruntled
employees often times save these records only to produce them
for the plaintiff in a lawsuit.
A good records retention policy should cover
secondary records and provide for reasonable life spans. Employees
should be encouraged to regularly shred documents past their
usefulness.
As your employees clean out their desks this
month why not bring in a shredding service and hold a paper
shredding day? Provide everyone with the company's retention
guidelines and encourage them to clean out their desks and
file cabinets. Have shredding bins located around the office
so everything ends up in the shredder and not in the trash.
Not only do you increase security but the paper is recycled.
You might also consider allowing each employee
to bring in a box of shredding from his or her home. Let everyone
know you would like them to bring in any paperwork they have
taken home but they are welcome to fill up the box with any
other shredding they need done. This not only helps protect
your employees from identity theft but also helps you to better
control your company's information.
Employees will appreciate a break from slow
home shredders and it is an inexpensive perk. The incremental
cost to have an additional box shredded is low.
Paper
Shredders | Types
of Paper Shredders and How They Work |
Paper
Shredder Oil: Keep Your Shredder Running Smoothly
Decoding
Paper Shredder Terms | How
to Choose the Shredder That's Right For You |
Paper
Shredder Buying Decisions |
How
to Host an Office Paper Shredding Day |
Owning
Your Own Paper Shreder is a Must |
How
to Safely Have Documents Destroyed by Professionals |
