Every company wants to maximize its profits. But when it comes to finding ways to reduce costs, it’s all too easy to look at the big picture — to aim high and cut out those big-ticket items. Often, however, there are smaller, less familiar opportunities to reclaim profits that result in big wins in the long haul — often with very little change to internal processes.
Every dollar counts, and every opportunity to recoup costs should be taken. This isn’t just an accurate statement for small businesses but for big businesses, too. Seeing opportunities to save in one area often opens the door and empowers us to seek out opportunities to save elsewhere.
One such opportunity for saving money is to re-evaluate and look at how your company is destroying and disposing of expired and sensitive documents.
Why Secure Document Destruction Is Important
Destroying old paperwork has various benefits; some are practical, while others can keep your company on the right side of the law. Many of the merits of document destruction dovetail nicely with ways companies can save money during the shredding process.
Destruction with a Professional Shredding Service Will Save You Money
Outsourcing and partnering with a professional company, one that can either come to you at regular intervals or for one-off shredding projects, may seem counterintuitive. How can a service that costs money save money? But this can be more financially sound than processing your own document destruction in-house.
Read on to find out how connecting with professional shredding services can help your company save money.
Working with Professionals Saves Employee Time
For one, if you hire a professional service, there’s no need to pay a team member — either their hourly pay or by taking away from salaried time – by asking them to complete a task that may take away from their regular workload, which no doubt involves contributing to incoming revenue in some capacity.
Before the process even begins, valuable employee time may need to be taken for team training to ensure that shredding is done within the parameters of health and safety: an important measure from a professional standpoint.
Document destruction doesn’t simply involve putting pieces of paper into a shredder; the papers need to be organized first. Taking papers out of binders and folders, removing staples, and taking off paperclips will take an amount of time that’s difficult to predict. Not to mention, irritating and time-consuming paper jams may come up along the way.
Following the shredding process, bags of shredded paper will need to be moved for collection, possibly down flights of stairs or to another location.
On the other hand, if you outsource this process, team members will simply need to drop papers for destruction into bins or boxes — which companies like Absolute Destruction shredding services can provide.
Many professional companies like these will also allow you to schedule routine destruction at regular intervals, which means little to no time will be spent by your administrative team organizing pick-ups.
Subcontracting Document Destruction Retains Team Morale
Asking a team member to take time out of their day to shred documents could lead to decreased morale as it could be perceived as a task that undermines their abilities. In extreme cases, if this happens more than once, it may lead to a lack of motivation and output.
Professional Document Destruction Prevents Injury
Even with time dedicated to effective team training and shredder safety, accidents can happen, resulting in compromised worker safety.
Injury to a team member may result in paid time off while they seek medical assistance and take time to recover, and in extreme cases, legal and financial ramifications, like workers’ compensation.
There’s No Need to Pay for Maintenance and Repairs
Buying a heavy-duty, professional shredder that can manage large volumes of paper can cost upwards of hundreds of dollars. And in most cases, the shredders that you purchase in big box stores just won’t cut it — pardon the pun.
For paper to be destroyed effectively, it needs to be processed in a crisscross formation and not in strips like you’ll get from a commercially purchased shredder.
It’s not just the initial investment, either; there’s ongoing shredder maintenance, too — like keeping the blades sharp — and some money will need to be kept aside for unexpected repairs. You’ll then have to deal with a backlog of documents that will likely accumulate while the in-house shredder awaits repair.
Secure Shredding Keeps Sensitive Papers Secure
If sensitive papers aren’t destroyed effectively, you could be leaving your company wide open to data being compromised, which, depending on your location, will likely see your company on the wrong side of the law.
Papers that are simply shredded in-house into strips are relatively easy to put back together for a dedicated, unscrupulous thief who won’t see the investment of time as a hurdle if it means they can steal your company and your employees private information.
This act could see your company violating compliance, which could result in costly lawsuits, losing clients — which will negatively impact revenue — and a deflated public perception.
Why Pay Rent for Paper?
If you don’t require regular document destruction (maybe you don’t accumulate lots of papers), you may be bypassing destroying paperwork and files altogether. This might be acceptable from a security perspective if the documents don’t hold any form of personal information. However, they’re undoubtedly taking up valuable room in your office, and they may also be a threat to fire safety.
Instead of hoarding papers and paying commercial rent for a room that’s full of filing cabinets, by organizing a one-time collection with a reputable shredding service, you can instantly free up valuable office space for what’s really important.
The Bottom Line on Professional Shredding
By partnering with a reputable shredding company, you’re taking a step toward streamlining a relatively tedious internal practice while taking the risk out of the process — saving your business money along the way.
If this has given insight into the small, sometimes overlooked, ways that your company can save money, there are certainly other avenues for exploration when it comes to paperwork. Think outside of the box this year and look for different ongoing ways to cut costs and streamline processes.
