Many companies are moving to a shred-all policy, but that can become an expensive proposition when things like newspapers and pizza boxes also end up in the mix. While the “better safe than sorry” approach is considered best, a blanket policy is expensive. Shredding everything from last year’s draft budget documents to the paper and napkins from the cafeteria can take up a lot of resources.

“We want people to understand what’s confidential and what’s not and do that assessment themselves. Then the hard part is getting people to comply,” says Derek Knights, Director, Investigative Services for Sun Life, who has worked for a number of companies that have developed strict document disposal policies.

When it comes to the basics of choosing an outsourced provider of document destruction, there are some fundamental rules that apply, such as insisting the outsourcer’s staff have undergone criminal background checks and that they run a secure facility that they will let you inspect the premises at any time along with their transport trucks.

According to Oakville, Ont.-based Shred-it, which provides onsite document destruction, their client base ranges in size from small organizations with a handful of employees to large companies employing more than 100,000.

“For small and medium-sized businesses, we can offer a real cost savings and it’s more secure than having one of their employees standing at a shredder which can also mean lost productivity when their time could be better used elsewhere,” says president and CEO Rob Warshauer. “Also, do you want that employee looking at documents you deem confidential, or do you want to err on the side of caution?”

When confidential waste is on board, the contractor’s truck must be locked and physically secure to a standard acceptable to you and only authorized individuals may have access to the confidential waste on board the truck.

“We want to know the organization has a secure facility and we want the right to inspect all of it when we want. The onsite shredding has to permit that one of our people can oversee it and that the bins are completely emptied. The hard part is getting people to understand what’s confidential and needs to be shredded and what can be recycled,” says Knights.

If you’re outsourcing the task, it’s also important to know what requirements to include in the agreement. At the top of the list should be the requirement that the company has done background checks and established a secure process for the handling of documents to be destroyed.

“It’s the confidentiality of the information that’s at issue, not the specific task,” says Knights. “If someone is in charge of taking documents that need to be shredded and they take them to the loading dock to give to the shredding company and they leave the documents and the boxes sit there until the shredding guy comes, you have to make sure someone is supervising that process. It’s like maintaining continuity of evidence,” says Knights.

Warshauer says appropriate background checks are done on Shred-it employees.

“We do significant background checks of driver’s licence and make sure everybody is bondable. Our employees also see so many bags of documents a day it’s not really an issue; they just want to move on to the next customer.”