Since the pandemic began, we’ve all had to question whether actions that we used to take for granted are still safe. Can you get together with friends for dinner? Should you visit the store in person, or is it better to shop online? Is it safe to go into the office for meetings? For business owners, those decisions are about protecting not only yourself but your employees too. As a business owner myself, I understand the responsibility of deciding what’s safe for your team during COVID. You have to second guess every decision, even about something as simple as scheduling document shredding services.
If your workforce had been working from home in 2020, you may need to address their concerns about returning to the office in 2021 with things we once took for granted like sharing the Keurig or shredder pickup. Fortunately, Northeast Data Destruction has been able to continually operate since the crisis started. We were able to quickly update our procedures to support social distancing without sacrificing service quality or safety. That’s important because document shredding is still a critical element of your data security plan. As long as both the service provider and customer take some basic safety precautions, there’s no reason why document shredding should be unsafe during COVID.
COVID and Document Shredding
There are a few key reasons why we’re comfortable urging clients to go ahead with document shredding right now.
For one, it’s a relatively low-risk process in terms of virus transmission—assuming you work with a safety-conscious document shredding company. As experts have told us, the virus is most easily spread when people are in close contact. The document shredding process didn’t require much close contact even before the pandemic. When you scheduled a pickup, the shredding company personnel would arrive and quickly haul away your full containers of documents. There might be a little friendly small talk, but it was a quick and unobtrusive process even then. By now, your document shredding company should have procedures in place that allow you and your staff to securely hand off your documents without any close contact.
Some people might worry about document shredding right now because they’re nervous about getting the virus from surfaces. They would rather let old documents and hard drives stack up in a storage room than handle anything that their coworkers may have touched or breathed on. The CDC acknowledges that it’s possible someone could get COVID from “touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or eyes,” but also stresses that this is a less common way for COVID to spread.
That said, we understand you may be uncomfortable with any level of risk. The CDC also says that the virus can’t survive on surfaces for more than seven days. Quarantining all your shreddable materials in a closed room for a week should make your old documents safe for you to handle when you’re ready to pass them off for shredding.
The other major factor here is data security. This is a key reason we advise businesses not to delay document shredding during COVID. Data breaches don’t stop for a pandemic. In fact, some businesses may have paid less attention to security procedures once COVID procedures became a top priority. It’s just not advisable to let your confidential materials build up for months at a time. If a physical breach were to happen, months of sensitive data could be exposed.
How We’ve Addressed COVID
We take safety very seriously at Northeast Data Destruction, and always have. (Our NAID “AAA” Certification is a testament to our high safety standards.) Fortunately, we’ve been able to adjust to COVID by making just a few significant changes.
- We’re strictly following CDC guidelines. Our service personnel always wear masks, practice social distancing and take other recommended precautions while onsite with customers and working in our facilities.
- We’ve temporarily paused the option to witness shredding services. For security reasons, sometimes our customers want someone in-house to verify that their confidential materials have been destroyed. Generally we welcome these customers to send a representative to our facility to witness the shredding process. During the COVID pandemic, in the interest of protecting our staff from possible exposure, we’ve temporarily stopped offering this service. (That said, if it’s absolutely necessary that someone from your organization witnesses the destruction of your materials, we’ll work to accommodate you.)
- We’re accommodating customers with as much flexibility as possible. While we’ve been able to consistently operate since the pandemic began, we know that many of our customers have closed their offices and/or slashed their onsite business hours while employees work remotely. We also know that a lot of businesses have introduced new procedures within their work sites. We’re working with every individual customer to schedule convenient pickups, and adhering to whatever policies they’ve imposed. If you want to do a contactless outdoor hand-off of your materials, for example, we’ll work with you to create a secure plan.
The bottom line is that document shredding can absolutely be done safely during COVID, at least when you work with Northeast Data Destruction. Safety will always be our top priority. I’d be happy to talk through any specific concerns you may have—contact me today!