One of the most important functions of your business on a daily basis has nothing to do with managing customer relationships or making sure that your employees are paid on time, though those are most certainly integral to your operations. Instead, one of the biggest areas of business that most people don’t pay enough attention to is sensitive paper shredding and other confidential document destruction functions. You can’t shred every last piece of paper that comes through your doors – doing so would not only be inefficient, but also would violate privacy laws in certain situations. Understanding what types of documents you need to be shredding is just as important as knowing how to shred them.

Sensitive Documents To Shred

Sensitive Documents To Shred

Confidential Document Laws

One of the biggest keys to learning what types of documents you need to shred requires you or an employee to stay up-to-date on all of the latest privacy laws in Australia. The Australian Privacy Principle or APP11, is actually very specific regarding how a business needs to take reasonable steps to protect personal information from loss and misuse, for example. By refreshing yourself on any changes that are made, you’ll find that a large part of the work in this area has already been done for you. Shred on Site is well versed on the compliant document destruction contained within the APP11, and can conduct inductions to ensure your business is compliant.

Shredding Sensitive Materials

Any document that contains potentially identifying information about a former employee or a current or former client will need to be shredded sooner rather than later. This includes any financial information that you may have been keeping for their account, telephone numbers, employment information, and other important items.

More than that, any legal documents and medical records that you may be hanging onto should also be shredded properly to help make sure that they don’t fall into the wrong hands. Other examples of types of documents that will need to be shredded include profit and loss statements for your own business (after the appropriate amount of time required by the Privacy Act has passed), the results of any audits that you’ve conducted, payroll and other personnel files that are older than seven years in age and more.

You’ll also do well to make sure that you’re shredding any correspondence between employees that may have been printed out and kept in hard copy for whatever reason, particularly if these documents contain information that could be considered trade secrets.

Make no mistake: secure document destruction is not a function of your business that should be taken lightly. If you don’t know what types of documents you need to be shredding, and (most importantly) how to shred them, you put yourself, your customers and the business you’ve worked so hard to build in harm’s way. For those situations where you want to make sure that paper shredding is handled quickly in or around the Melbourne area, efficiently and properly, Shred on Site is here to help. Contact them today to discuss your document shredding needs.