subject: Why Shredding Is Cost Effective [print this page] Whenever someone who plays a managerial role at a business is considering hiring an outside service to perform a function for them, they are usually doing so because they feel that it is either a service that they cannot perform themselves, or that will save them money by having an outside contractor perform it instead. This is why many want to first understand whether using document shredding services can actually save them money over simply shredding their own documents. When you see the number of companies who are regularly using a third party to fulfill their shredding needs through, it becomes fairly clear that there must be at least some advantage to having another company do this for you.
Whenever you are having an employee of your company perform a task for you, you are paying them for the time it takes them to complete that task. This is where the considerations of cost saving come largely into play for hiring document shredders. If you have to pay your employee to shred your paperwork for you, you have to realize that it is going to take many hours for them to regularly keep up to your shredding needs, especially if you are a larger firm. Likely, you hired them to perform a service that they had some skill or experience in, and the time that you are paying them for could be better spent fulfilling that service rather than shredding paper. In addition, the types of shredders which are used in offices are both very much slower than those used by professional companies, and they do not do as thorough a job of shredding the documents, leaving it possible that you could still be a victim of many of the problems that you are shredding in order to avoid.
Security is one of the largest reasons why companies regularly shred all their documents. Corporate spying has become a full time occupation for some in this country, and the law clearly states that the garbage is public property, and many corporate secrets have been exposed through dumpster diving. Paper that has only been through a regular office shredder is in no way 100% secure, but that which has been handled by a professional document destruction firm is, which can give your company much great comfort in knowing that your secrets are safe and that you have adhered to any laws regarding document destruction in your industry.
