Do Your Employees Understand Document Disposal Rules?

Tips for Successfully Implementing your Shredding Policy

One of the main reasons for creating a formal shredding policy is to take the confusion out of what to shred and what to keep. The important thing is that employees should not have to make that decision; instead they must follow the organization’s rules related to paper and digital media destruction. However, even after introducing an information security or shredding policy, how many times have you noticed: 

• Critical documents lying loosely on desks, or in drawers and cabinets that are not locked?
• Papers with confidential information in the trash can, instead of the shredder bin?
• Delivery personnel or outsiders tailgating your staff and gaining entry to confidential workspaces?

There is a vast difference between writing a robust policy and ultimately implementing it across the board. While there is no magic formula to make this happen overnight, read on to know how you can deepen the reach and understanding of your information security measures. 

Tips to Ensure Adherence and Understanding of Shredding and other Information Security Measures 

Once you have created a document destruction policy, it is imperative to:

1. Make the policy available across all employee communication channels, such as notice boards, intranet, employee self-service portals, or other relevant online and offline avenues.
2. Train and sensitize your staff on the requirements of the policy, including the significance of their contribution and the impact on business, in case of non-adherence. 
3. Review the laws that apply to your industry.

Here are some of the other aspects that may help in successfully implementing your policy.

Depth and Quality of Training

• During the training, explain clearly what needs to be shredded or destroyed and at what intervals. Keep the sessions interactive and resolve any doubts and queries.  
• Educate employees that you have a selected a NAID AAA Certified secure destruction company and train them on making sure confidential documents (paper and digital media) are securely placed in designated containers until they are taken away for destruction and recycling.

Enabling Implementation

• Ensure that new hires go through the training during their induction, while existing employees get a refresher at periodic intervals.
• Place the Secure Collection Containers at convenient locations within the office and encourage employees to place documents in them in a timely manner, instead of piling up their document destruction jobs at their desks.

Enabling Adherence 

• Think of gamifying your information security initiatives, if your budget permits. 
• Introduce creative ways to incentivize adherence and penalize non-compliance of shredding rules.
• Establish a second level check, if possible, to ensure that only those papers that are supposed to be destroyed, make it to the shredding service.

Depending on your industry, certain information management measures may be influenced by regulatory requirements, whereas others you may have introduced voluntarily. No matter why the policies are in place, the end goal is to protect confidential information about your customers, employees, business and other stakeholders. Leave the job to a professional, NAID AAA Certified company, such as TITAN Mobile Shredding. While your employees focus on their core responsibilities, our data destruction experts will take care of your paper and digital media shredding needs. Take advantage of our range of options, including routine on-site services, annual on-site purging, hard drive destruction and media destruction.

For systematic and safe destruction of your paper and digital media, call us at (866) 848-2699 or contact us online. We look forward to creating customized shredding solutions in line with your industry specific requirements, as well as budgets.