Every busy place of work has to contend with a number of health and safety conditions relating to staff members and visitors, in the form of both suppliers and customers. This should always be a priority of a business owner and his or her management team, but another vital aspect of the business is how to protect critical information that is stored by the company from potential theft or damage. There are a few ways in which you can ensure your company is safeguarded against this, one being the major benefits to hiring the services of a local document shredding service in order to manage the safe and secure disposal of any paper waste relating to your business, the other looking for secure storage solutions for your documents that can be archived.

For many business owners the thought of storing important physical documents off-site and disposing of unwanted documents that contain personal and sensitive information relating to employees, clients and suppliers, might seem a little daunting. If the documents are in your office storage options, they aren’t going to go anywhere are they?

Now, think for a minute about the possibility of two events. The first event being an incident where your work premises are broken into and important documents are potentially stolen. A second problem is with accidental damage in the form of a fire or water damage. In both cases there is something you could have done about it, as the owner of the business.

Every single business creates paper on a daily basis, most of which is not required in any shape or form the next day. If left unchecked, office paper can start to pile up, files and folders filled and drawers begin to make way for cabinets, which in turn fill up whole rooms.

Not only is this an error in terms of taking up vital space in the office that could be used in a better, and more efficient way to make your company money, but it is also a potential fire hazard. Throw in the general paper waste and any clutter around the office and you can see how with just one incident you could potentially lose personal information that has financial and sensitive details included. Fire, flood or theft could cause you to lose information that leaves you liable under data protection laws, whether it was documentation you had to store securely, or those documents which should have been destroyed in a timely and secure manner.

One way in which you can ensure the risk is minimised or negated is to put together all documents that you are currently storing in your workplace and store them in a secure location close by. Highly secure document storage facilities provide you with peace of mind that any potential sensitive information is not at risk of being stolen or accidently damaged in your place of work.

Another option, which can be conducted to complement the first is to employ the services of a document shredding company. By building a culture of shredding paper waste in an office environment you know you are complying with data privacy regulations, whilst reducing the fire hazard and risk of theft of documents containing personal information.

Content written by Louise Jenkins