subject: Having Documents Shredded Onsite [print this page] There are many cases when a Philadelphia document management firm is going to advise their clients that they need to introduce a shredding policy of some kind into their operations. Generally speaking, it is a bad idea for several reasons for a company to take care of their own paper shredding needs. This is due to both cost and liability and security factors. When hiring an outside firm to complete the task of shredding important documents, there are generally several different options that a company has, but in most cases, using an onsite shredding firm is going to be the method that will come as the most highly recommended.
There are companies that are going to be willing to come and pick up your documents and take them away to be shredded. Unless you have very specific evidence to the contrary about a certain company, this is not a method you should choose in most circumstances. Shredding documents is usually about protecting against liability and enhancing their security and security is going to be at its absolute lowest if you allow someone to cart away all your important paperwork completely unsupervised.
On site document shredding on the other hand provides you with a much better level of security. In this type of scenario, a company will come to your location. They usually come in a van, or other larger vehicle, so that they can bring with them their industrial strength shredding equipment. They will then proceed to destroy any paperwork that you require them to destroy, and you can easily have an employee stay with them to make sure it is all completed in the appropriate fashion.
When you have the company actually at your own location, you become aware of every single person that is going to handle your documents. Common practice in the shredding industry is to require each of those people to sign a non-disclosure agreement. While shredding it is entirely possible they might, even unintentionally, read information contained in the documents. That way, you legally bind each of them to protect and not disclose that information.
Another advantage to using an onsite shredder is that you actually know that the documents are being destroyed, as you can watch the whole process. Horror stories abound of offsite shredding companies simply carting the paper off and not actually destroying it, something which could potentially leave their clients open to a wide variety of liabilities.
