Data Shredding Services Site Safety – 1277 Days without a Loss Time Injury

For Data Shredding Services of Texas, Inc.’s employee workforce, June 1, 2018 marked 1,277 days without a lost-time injury (LTI).  The achievement is a culmination of enhanced reporting, monitoring, and auditing, as well as an increased focus on preventative measures. By embracing a holistic approach to safety that includes training on workplace practices such as machine-specific lockout/tagout procedures, proper lifting techniques, and on-the-road safety, DSS has clocked in over three and a half years worked without a recordable injury.

Operations Manager Cesar Gonzalez credits the recently-achieved benchmark to the rich safety culture at Data Shredding Services of Texas, Inc., stating that “this achievement is a reflection of the company’s faithfulness to creating a work environment where everyone looks after themselves and their colleagues.  The safety-workplace education we provide is welcomed, appreciated, and adhered to by all of our team members.” DSS employees, he added, are trained monthly and tested for proficiency.

In addition to participating in interactive trainings that strengthen the company’s safety culture, DSS employees also perform pre-task evaluations to identify and correct all hazards prior to starting work.  Moreover, internal processes which encourage both collective and individual responsibility help employees to not only hold each other accountable but also to achieve the high level of professionalism for which Data Shredding Services of Texas, Inc. is known.

For additional information, please feel free to contact us directly.

Data Shredding Services of Texas, Inc.

615 West 38th Street
Houston, TX 77018
1.888.747.3399
www.shreddinghouston.com

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Having your office taken over by paperwork is not something that is good for your business. Oftentimes, having papers and files strewn all over the place means that you will have to sort through those when you are trying to find specific forms and information. One option that you have for getting the paperwork under control is hiring shredding services in Houston to get rid of the papers without putting the information at risk of falling into the wrong hands.

How often do you need shredding services?

One important factor that you have to consider is how often you will need shredding services. This is important because you will need to choose between a one-off shredding or a regular shredding.

The frequency of shredding is something that you can decide. If you do not have a lot of paperwork or have a large storage area, you might be able to have biannual or annual shreddings. If you go through a lot of paper or do not have a large storage area, it may be a better idea to choose a monthly, quarterly, or weekly shredding.

One-off shredding might be appropriate if you don’t have a lot of paperwork and are not likely going to have enough to require regular disposal. This would also be the case if you do not have confidential information that must be destroyed.

How much do you need shredded at each session?

The amount of paper you are going to need shredded is another consideration. The more paper you are going to need shredded, the more time it will take. This can have an impact on the scheduling for the shredding services. For example, you would not want to have a four-hour project starting at 4 pm if you need to close your business at 5 pm.

How many locations require shredding services?

If your company has more than one location, you need to decide if you need shredding services for each location. In some cases, you might need to have each location serviced separately, while other cases may allow you to transport all the paper that needs to be shredded to a central location and have the shredding take care of there. If you choose to use a central location, make sure that you take great care in handling sensitive documents. and that your handling adheres to the standards of the law.

What laws must you follow in order to maintain document security?

Some industries are bound by laws that govern document security. This means that you will have to know what laws pertain to your business. In some cases, these laws dictate how long documents are kept. They can also dictate how the documents must be destroyed.

Some example laws that might apply to your company include:

• The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
• The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
• The Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act

Working with a shredding company that is familiar with the laws that pertain to your case can help ensure that you are covered. The last thing you want to have happen is to find out that your company’s documents have not been destroyed in an appropriate and legal manner.

Why do you want shredding services in Houston?

The purpose of the shredding services is important. If you are hiring a shredding service so that you can just do away with excess paper, security might not be a factor in your case. If you are hiring a shredding service so that you can ensure the information on the documents isn’t getting into the wrong hands, security will be a huge factor.

Hiring a paper-shredding company can also help you to get ready to go paperless. Instead of hanging onto all of the paper copies of documents, you can scan those into a computer. They will be easy to search for and find if they are in computer files.

Is your budget prepared for the shredding services?

Your budget is another factor that can impact your ability to hire a shredding service. Getting an estimate for the job that you need done can help you to ensure that you are prepared to cover the costs.

If you get the quote and find that the budget is tight, you should consider how important it is to shred the documents and whether your budget can sustain the cost of a shredding service. Ultimately however, your company’s security and the security of your client’s information is well worth the cost of having the documents shredded — even if that means having to adjust the budget.

Do you need on-site or off-site shredding?

The answer to this question depends on your needs and/or preferences. If you choose the on-site shredding services, a mobile shredding truck will come to your company to get the job done. If you choose off-site shredding, we bring secure containers to your company. Papers that need to be shredded are placed in these. When those containers are full, we pick them up and transport them securely to the off-site shredding facility. The documents are then destroyed in accordance with laws that pertain to your business.

How concerned are you about the environment?

What happens to the paper after it is shredded is a consideration for some people. Knowing that the paper will be recycled is one point that helps companies to choose a paper shredding company in Houston. When the paper is recycled after destruction, it is environmentally friendly.

Sources:

 https://www.angieslist.com/articles/confidential-paper-shredding-tips-businesses.htm

Why Shred?

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One way to get rid of unneeded papers is through mobile shredding. Houston schools and homeschool families might benefit from this type of shredding service. Mobile shredding trucks can handle 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of paper per hour, so this can be a short process for smaller jobs or a longer process for larger jobs.

Public and Private Schools

Public and private schools go through massive amounts of paper each year. If these schools tried to keep all of the paper that was used, those institutions would be overrun with paper. Since that isn’t feasible, public and private schools can use mobile shredding services to get rid of some of the paper.

Help the Environment

When you think of mobile shredding services, you shouldn’t think just of the protected documents that will be heading to the vehicle. Instead, you can shred all of the papers that your school uses. Not only is this helpful since you won’t have to try to personally dispose of all of that paper, but you can also help the environment.

Instead of sending large amounts of paper to a landfill to never be used again, papers that you have shredded with the mobile shredding service are sent off for recycling so that they can be used in a new form . Since what has been shredded is bundled into large bundles, the information on the pages is safe.

It might be possible for you to get the shredded paper back if your school needs it for projects, which could be helpful if students have arts and crafts projects, such as paper mache crafts. It is also helpful if your school is going to assemble care packages to ship to military members or other people since shredded paper is an excellent packing material.

Lower Storage Fees

Your school can save a lot of money in storage costs if you don’t have to rent a building or other place to keep documents that are no longer needed. If you are only using mobile shredding to get rid of documents that are past the date on which they must be kept by law, you can schedule an annual mobile shredding session so you can get rid of the documents that have aged out over the past 12 months.

If your school has moved toward digital records and is keeping digital files instead of paper files, you can schedule mobile shredding services at regular intervals to come and destroy the papers that have been scanned and saved digitally. This saves additional space and makes it easier to find paper documents that you need to keep in the original format.

Data destruction services can destroy the digital records when the time your school has to keep them is up. Even though you will have to keep copies of the digital records, these digital records take up less physical space than boxes upon boxes of actual paper documents.

Home Schools

Homeschool families can benefit from mobile shredding services. Just like traditional schools, homeschool families go through massive amounts of paper in a year. Keeping all of the paper isn’t always possible, especially for families with multiple children.

Mobile shredding services, which can come out monthly, annually, or on any schedule that meets your needs, can help you to get rid of any unnecessary papers. If there are multiple homeschool families in your area, you might be able to work out a shredding day on which all families bring their papers to have them shredded. This is a possible benefit that a homeschool co-op or partnership can look into for the homeschool families that are members.

Records to Keep

When you are going through records for homeschooling, you should carefully consider what you are going to keep. Texas doesn’t require you to keep any educational records, but keeping some records can be very useful. Teens who are in high school in a homeschool might need to keep records that could be necessary for college admission. This could include information that would be included on transcripts.

As is the case with traditional schools, you can always keep digital copies of records by scanning them. This might make it easier to put your hands on documents you need because you can just search on your computer instead of trying to go through file boxes.

Preparing for Mobile Shred Day

When mobile shred day arrives, the papers must be ready to go into the shredder. The shredding truck is self-contained, so it runs on its own power. The boxes that are brought to the shredding vehicle will be dumped into the shredder. You must remove anything that is hazardous from the papers. You can leave staples and rubber bands on the papers, but you need to remove anything else on the paper.

When the shredding is done, you will be responsible for the clean up. This includes picking up the boxes that were used to transport the papers to the mobile shredding truck.

Sources:

http://www.adeanet.org/adea/downloadcenter/NESIS/E-records-021065.pdf

http://www.thsc.org/homeschooling-in-texas/state-requirements/

Recordkeeping

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Make Learning Fun

Fun lessons are ones that children will remember, and it doesn’t take much. For younger children, colorful worksheets, color pages, and hands-on lessons are fun. For older children, computer-based learning and hands-on activities are fun.

What you want to avoid when you are homeschooling your child is having them stress out over work. They shouldn’t be overwhelmed by the work they are doing since you control the curriculum.

Remember to Include Visual Forms

Books, workbooks and printed materials are some of the visual educational forms that meet requirements in Texas. Their goal is to show the child the concepts that are introduced. The visual forms can involve reading a book about a favorite subject and taking a test or completing a worksheet after the lesson is completed.

Just because you need to have visual forms of materials as part of a lesson doesn’t mean that you can only use these forms for the lessons. Taking a trip to an art museum is an acceptable enrichment activity for a lesson in the arts. A trip to the symphony is ideal for music lessons. You could even take a trip to an amusement park as part of a physics lesson.

Include the Five Core Subjects

Good citizenship, writing, reading, mathematics, and grammar are the five core subjects that you are required to teach your children. On top of these, you and your child can choose other lessons in social studies, fine arts, science, physical education, and other subjects that interest your child.

It is possible to incorporate the core subjects in lessons about other subjects. Reading a story about your child’s favorite animal, writing out a story about a mythical creature, and factoring angles for building something all bring core subjects into the picture.

Use Good Record Keeping

You need to keep good records of what your child does for their schooling. One way to do this is to keep paper records of the lessons, activities, and grades. At the end of each semester, year, or unit, you can scan the records, worksheets, tests, and other important documents so you can store them on a jump drive. This is an easy way to keep the information organized without having to hang on to all of the original documents.

As you decide what records you are going to scan and which ones can just be thrown away without scanning, it is better to err on the side of caution. If you think that you might need proof of something later, scan and keep the document. You should also scan and keep things that your child is especially proud of. If you decide to throw something away, its best to choose document shredding as the way to dispose of sensitive documents.

Coincidentally, scanning and organizing things is a good strategy for parents who don’t homeschool because you can keep art projects and other items that your child makes in school. Refrigerator art is a nice touch to your kitchen, but when it is time to rotate out to new art, you have to do something with the old art.

Keep Information Protected

With homeschooling comes printables, records, and other paperwork that has to be organized. While it might be tempting to just throw things away, you should keep anything with sensitive information out of the trash. Those items include transcripts, vaccination records, and anything else that has your child’s full name, birthday, Social Security number, and other information.

Since you don’t want to throw documents with sensitive information away, you now have to figure out what to do with it. Document shredding is one option. This lets you dispose of those documents without having to worry about the information getting into the wrong hands. Additionally, you can also add in other documents, such as financial records and health records, that are ready to be disposed of.

Sources:

https://www.thsc.org/homeschooling-in-texas/

http://www.thsc.org/homeschooling-in-texas/state-requirements/

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With the alarming amount of data breaches occurring daily in the United States, and ongoing identity theft cases, it’s no wonder more and more businesses are choosing to be proactive. Outsourcing your paper shredding needs is a smart step towards protecting your employees and customers, keeping sensitive information safe. So how do you go about choosing a document destruction company to look after your paper shredding? Providing an outside company the permission to handle your documents is a big decision, and one that should involve careful research and consideration first.

Here are a couple of important questions work asking: Is the document destruction staff staff knowledge and properly trained? What security measures do they have in place? How do they ensure all documents are securely destroyed? These are all very good questions to ask, prior to hiring a document destruction company for your shredding needs.

While some shredding companies will claim their document destruction process is entirely secure and safe, if they do not provide you in adequate evidence that displays this, you should consider shredding elsewhere. What is meant by provided evidence? When you work with a reputable shredding company, they will immediately present you with a Certificate of Destruction upon shredding, as added reassurance your material has been securely shred. Always ask for this piece of information; if this is denied to you, consider that a red flag and move on to a shredding company that implements this as part of their shredding process.

A Certificate of Destruction offers the following information to your Houston Business:

• Date and site where shredding took place
• Distinct serial number
• Clear statement of governing terms and conditions
• Witness to the shredding process (this could be a professional from the shredding provider, or one of your employees)

Always request a Certificate of Destruction if this isn’t voluntarily presented to you; for your own protection as a company, you should never accept anything less. Secure document destruction is the only process that guarantees your sensitive material has been completely destroyed. Should any privacy issues arise, this certificate acts as peace of mind in knowing there is accountability to fall back on, should any privacy issues arise.

Data Shredding Services in Houston is your trustworthy source for safe and secure shredding, each and every time. Following each shred appointment, we will present you with a Certificate of Destruction, outlining that our shredding process is in fact compliant with current legislation, and that we take the protection of our customers seriously.

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Businesses seeking to safely dispose of corporate data, consumer records, medical information and vital internal data are choosing to work with companies that specialize in the shredding and disposal of corporate records. Choosing the right company can make the process easy, painless, convenient and cost effective. Whether you’re looking to dispose of records to meet regulatory compliance, protect your data from corporate espionage, leaks or other damaging events, or simply cleaning house, you need to know your options in order to make an intelligent choice.

Benefits of Responsible Document Handling

Along with needing to meet compliance issues, proper document handling and disposal is a smart business decision. Consumers are often worried about their personal information and by implementing a secure process, you can offer them peace of mind when doing business with your company.  Customer loyalty is built on trust. Being able to provide your clients with the knowledge and peace of mind that you properly handle documents will give you a business edge and translate into more sales.

There are many benefits of responsible document shredding including:

• Peace of mind for company owners, employees and customer

• Shredding and then recycling keeps paper out of landfills and moves your business towards        sustainability

• Shredding of sensitive and personal data keeps a company compliant with state and federal laws in terms of handling sensitive personal information

• Shredding responsibly by working with a third party can save you the capital expense of not purchasing an expensive paper shredder

•  Proper document handling offers customers and business owners a bond of trust, knowing that you are looking out for their welfare
• From an environmental standpoint shredding and recycling reduces deforestation for new paper products
• You gain the satisfaction of knowing you are doing your part to protect the environment as well as the personal lives of your customers. Companies that go the extra mile to protect their customers are often rewarded with loyalty and higher sales

Responsible document handling is more important then ever before. Recent privacy laws including HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and FACTA (the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act) makes your business responsible for protecting customer information.

The Mobile Shredding Solution

Hiring a professional company to destroy your sensitive documents offers some great benefits. Typically, you engage the services of a company to handle your document disposal needs. They then provide you with a set of secure containers into which employees can dispose of sensitive documents to be destroyed. There is no transportation of sensitive data involved because at a pre-determined date and time your shredding service provider will show up to your site with a mobile shredding equipment.

On-site Shredding is:

• Fast and Convenient – A truck will arrive to your location containing heavy duty machinery capable of handling thousands of pounds of documents per hour. The process is much faster than relying small personal shredders, and your sensitive data is stored in secure tamper proof containers prior to destruction.

• You Can Watch The Process – Putting the process into the hands of employees can open the door to human error. If information is left on a desk, or not properly destroyed it opens you up to breach or theft. On-site shredding allows you to watch the process as it happens without taking a lot of time out of your schedule. This firsthand verification is a key safety feature. Your documents never leave your location, so you can rest easier knowing the chain of custody is limited

•  Your Documents Are Unrecoverable – A professional service will not only shred your documents into tiny pieces, as an extra security measure, it will be mixed with other shredded paper making it impossible to reconstruct. Typically the waste is then recycled so it’s not only a safe process it’s environmentally friendly. The company will also provide the documentation necessary to prove legal regulatory compliance.

Working with a professional mobile shredding service is a convenient, safe and cost effective process.  Mobile shredding lessens the chain of custody by keeping documents in-house until they are destroyed. It offers you the ability to visually verify that your sensitive information has been properly destroyed and frees your staff to focus on mission critical, billable work. Mobile shredding is the fastest and easiest form of old document disposal available.

Choosing The Right Company

There is no “one-size-fits-all” shredding service. Your business needs are unique and you will need to vet any potential companies to make sure they can handle your job. Needs can vary widely depending on the volume of material you need to destroy, regulatory compliance needs, corporate security protocols and policies and many other factors.

Make sure to consider factors like employee compliance rates and the security and ease of movement of any containers you will receive prior to your shred day.  Shredding documents on-site are being often the most convenient method for most companies and an extremely safe way for businesses to dispose of sensitive documents. Make sure to do your due diligence before choosing the best company to fit your unique needs.

Sources:

http://docuvaultdv.com/document-shredding-2/

http://docuvaultdv.com/commercial-shredding/

https://enlightenme.com/on-site-paper-shredding/

https://soshred.com/the-benefits-of-mobile-shredding/

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