Why You Should Consider a Document Shredding Service when Employees Return to Work after COVID

COVID-19 has created a strange new reality for many workers.  Some have been furloughed or laid off for weeks, while others have had to adjust to working remotely from home.  As stay-at-home orders slowly begin to lift across the nation, more and more workers will begin to return to offices, and businesses will have to follow guidelines to create safe and healthy work environments.

It’s a new normal, more than a return to business as usual, and it will impact nearly every aspect of operations for your South Dakota business.  In addition to observing social distancing and improving sanitization policies and procedures, you’ll have to consider what to do with the disposable items employees use every day, including documents.

Employees may have to access older documents, share documents, and even bring in documents they’ve taken home or printed during the coronavirus lockdowns.  How can you ensure safety in this area when employees return from their COVID-19 absence?

Go Paperless as Much as Possible

If you have yet to make the switch to a paperless office environment, now is a great time to get started.  This move is not only environmentally responsible, but it will help to reduce all kinds of risks, from the possibility of data theft, to the potential for spreading germs.  At some point, you’ll want to convert your backlog of records to digital format, but for now, you can simply institute policies and systems that support secure access and sharing of digital data.

Conduct a Document Purge

During weeks of working from home, employees may have generated scads of documents, some of them containing confidential data.  Even employees that have shredders at home should not be allowed to dispose of documents on their own, for a couple of reasons.

First, they may not have a clear idea of which documents should be shredded and which can go in the trash.  A shred-all policy will account for this, but the secondary issue is that home office shredders are unlikely to comply with standards set forth by consumer privacy laws, not to mention additional regulations like HIPAA, FACTA, GLBA, and so on.

Your best bet is to have employees bring in all work documents and place them in secure bins supplied by your mobile shredding partner.  You can then schedule a one-time, major shredding service to purge this wealth of documents.

Schedule Regular Shredding Services

Even if you lean toward a paperless office environment, there are bound to be times when you simply can’t avoid the use of hard copies.  For this reason, it’s best to schedule regular shredding services, based on your level of need, to collect sensitive documents and shred them on site, or alternately, transport them to a secure facility for destruction and recycling.

As your South Dakota or North Dakota business welcomes employees back into the office after COVID-19, it’s important to account for safety and security.  If you’re interested in a one-time document purge and/or ongoing- document shredding services, contact the experts at SEAM today at 605-274-7326 (SEAM) or online to request a quote and schedule a service.