How Businesses Should Handle Shredding for Home Office Employees During COVID-19?

Before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown workplaces in the US, only 3.5% of the employees worked from home. However, due to the unprecedented and unique circumstances brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of companies were forced to start working from home. Today, almost a year later, there are no signs that companies will be returning to the old way of doing business. 

As the migration to remote working conditions is new, businesses are challenged with keeping the company information secure. The most critical issue that businesses face is that employees are producing confidential business records in their homes rather than in a secure workplace environment. The work from home employees could leave confidential documents out in the open because they feel safe in their homes. Businesses need to adopt a plan for collecting and destroying these materials. Otherwise, they may end up in recycling bins that are not secure. 

The best solution for document management is implementing a shredding strategy for documents that need to be discarded. There are multiple approaches that businesses can take to handle the shredding activity of employees working remotely. One of the easiest ways is to provide employees with a portable home shredder. This can handle the shredding of some documents, but it still provides a limited level of security. Businesses can overcome this challenge by hiring a shredding company that usually provides the following options. 

The shredding service company can send a mobile shredder to the desired location, which in this case would be the employees’ home, to handle shredding. A mobile shredder service includes a shredding truck with a built-in industrial shredder so that you can watch the shredding right in front of your eyes. This service is usually available at a flat-rate fee. There are also off-site shredding services that can be used in which a professional will pick up the documents and transport them to a shredding facility to be shredded. 

This is another service that companies can utilize for work from home employees. The ship and shred service providers come to the pick-up location to pick up prepacked materials for shredding. The cost of these services usually depends on the amount of material that needs to be shredded. This service is best for you if your employees have smaller shredding packages. 

Businesses can also become creative and organize community shredding events for their work from home employees. A community shredding event can have a mobile shredding truck stationed at the location to carry out immediate shredding at the location. Businesses can provide the remotely working employees time slots to come in and drop their shredding materials.

In the light of COVID-19, secure professional shredding has become the need of the hour, especially for sensitive documents. Whether your employees will continue to work from home temporarily or permanently, data confidentiality should be a top priority. Businesses can minimize the risk of company information being compromised by partnering with a professional shredding service.