Nowadays, you might be wondering, “Does anyone still have paper copies of documents?”
In short, yes, plenty of businesses still require you to sign physical copies of documents for their records. While many businesses digitally store information, there are still plenty that keep physical record books. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic we are increasingly seeing a need for businesses to shift their record books to digital formats.
If you’re a business owner or manager, you might have tons of physical copies of documents that are gathering dust. At some point, you should consider getting rid of outdated and unnecessary documents. However, you shouldn’t simply toss them in the trash. Instead, you should shred old business documents.
Here are five reasons why destroying old business documents is important.
Identity Theft
Identity theft is a serious threat to any business. While you might think it mainly affects online documents, it can still be a threat if you have physical documents.
As long as a document contains sensitive information, like a social security number or someone’s tax information, it’s a risk. While it’s bad if one of your employee’s information is stolen, it’s potentially worse if it’s a client. When you don’t need to store this information anymore, it’s best to destroy the documents immediately. This can help reduce the chances of identity theft.
Personal Business Confidentiality
As bad as identity theft is, there’s also the potential of having your business’s private and sensitive information leaking. This can be troublesome for a ton of reasons, including the potential to have your business’s finances and deals leaking.
When this type of information is leaked, it looks bad for the business and ruins your reputation. Destroying old business documents can help protect your business from these types of data breaches and preserve your reputation.
Increase Storage Space
Physical copies of documents tend to take up more space than you’d want. This can become a bigger issue the longer you’re in business and the more documents you might have accumulated.
By shredding old unneeded documents or converting documents to digital files, you’d be surprised at how much more physical space you’ll have. Having more physical space can feel quite refreshing and help keep your mind at ease.
Organization
Having a lot of papers in storage bins, boxes, file cabinets, or folders can look messy and disorganized. It can be hard to find relevant and important documents, which can be frustrating and wastes time.
It’s best to periodically go through old documents and see if they’re needed or not. For any document you need to keep, make sure they are properly labeled and easily accessible.
Legal Reasons
Above all else, you have a legal obligation as a business to ensure the privacy of your clients and employees. If none of the reasons above haven’t stressed the importance of destroying old business documents, know that privacy legislation requires businesses to destroy old personal and sensitive information.
Falling to comply with this legislation could make your business liable for prosecution. It’s best to avoid this risk and destroy old documents that aren’t needed.
Properly destroying old business documents is another task you should be aware of as a business owner or manager. While you might think old unneeded documents are safe sitting in a bin in the back of a closet, you never know if someone might find and steal that information for nefarious purposes.
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