When Should You Outsource Shredding Function?

Outsourcing according to Wikipedia refers to ‘the process of contracting to a third party’. The outsourcing industry in Malaysia has grown so much due to government support and increased industry expertise. Its multi-cultural and multi-lingual strengths have also attracted business companies from Asian markets, South East Asia, and the Middle East. Malaysia has a booming service sector, shifting from its production-based economy to a rapidly expanding economy dependent on education and service. Malaysia benefits from its strategic location, its global integration, and its well-educated workforce. India maybe the leading nation for supplying outsourcing services, but Malaysia is not too far off and is placed on the second tier of outsourcing nations with countries like China and The Philippines. Statistics have shown that Malaysian outsourcing industry is predicted to be worth $2 billion by 2012 justifying that most organisations are moving towards acquiring outsourcing services.

Outsourcing can be in the form of bookkeeping and accounting, IT solutions, payroll, HR, consultancy and many more. Outsourcing helps organisations to manage costs and run operations smoothly especially for the smaller organisations. Although it costs money, the primary reason for outsourcing is to cut costs. In addition, entrepreneurs in smaller organisations particularly have a lot of responsibilities and tasks to handle and by outsourcing; they would free their time to work on higher priority tasks such as to increase sales. It is always good to outsource tasks that will take up your time and effort to handle but will take an expert less time to do it. Your business would not be able to survive, let alone succeed if you are busy spending time on tasks that do not really grow your business. It may take longer time, potentially more frustrating and subsequently cost you more.

Outsourcing your shredding function is no different to any other outsourcing services offered in the market. By outsourcing your shredding needs, not only you reduce employees’ time wasted on shredding themselves, you would not have to invest in shredding machines and maintenance fees associated with it. It is less expensive to outsource shredding function than shredding it yourselves. The only way that having your own shredder is less expensive is if your employees do not use it i.e. no shredding is done. An office with just a few employees can generate over 50 kilos of paper every month. That means many hours spent feeding a few sheets at a time into a small office shredder. In most small and medium sized offices, employees are already overwhelmed with work. It is not practical to expect that a busy employee is going to devotedly go through the time-consuming inconvenience of arduously putting everything they should destroy through a slow office shredder. More often than not, whenever they place the materials near the shredder, someone often decides to throw them out to avoid the hassle and mess. Even if an office shredder could keep up with large volumes of daily shredding, which it does not, what happens when you have to destroy more records than normal? Maybe you are cleaning old records out of storage or someone just cleans out their office. Even the slightest surge in the amount of material to be destroyed creates a nightmare for employees.

The next issue is whether you can trust your employees? When your employees do the shredding, 2 scenarios exist. You either have entry-level employees, in which case you may expose sensitive personnel records and competitive information to individuals not meant to see it, or management-level employees, who are especially busy and paid huge money to do more important work, to do the shredding. Neither situation should be acceptable in any organisations.

Hence, when is the best time to outsource your shredding function? The answer is as soon as you can. It will not only help your business to grow but also protects your business.

Value of Information: Why Organisations In Malaysia Do Not Shred?

Protecting confidential information is not a “good to have” feature but it is rather a critical need. Confidentiality means keeping sensitive or valuable information from unauthorised disclosure. In reality, we all know that company's internal information is valuable. Without it, it would be rather difficult to monitor your performance, plan your business strategy, bill customers and remain competitive. Some companies have accumulated masses of data which they have used to drive organisational efficiencies or performance improvements. In Malaysia, large organisations’ records of at least 7 years are normally kept in physical storage warehouse.

But do we ever ask ourselves have we done enough to protect our most valuable information whether it is personal or business? You lock all your doors, you roll up the windows, and lock your vehicle, and you keep your wallet or handbag on you when you are out in public. But why would you leave personal or financial information exposed and vulnerable by either dumping it or selling it for recycling?

Most data leakage problems are invisible, to the extent that without the right solution in place it can be impossible to quantify the damage. Any information or data leakages from an organisation damages the company's reputation, credibility and consequently continuity of the business. Leakage of information may result in even up to 20 per cent loss in a company's revenues. These costs do not include indirect costs that result from brand damage, loss from customer trust etc. The source of leakage is normally unknown. As an example, it takes little time for an employee to leak client details or company information without the knowledge of management.

It may be the case whereby, we accidentally exposed our personal information by dumping credit card receipts in the bin etc. Every now and then, we are faced with identity theft fraud which is the unauthorised collection and use of your personal information, usually for criminal purposes. Our carelessness in dealing with confidential information will only be realised when it is too late to react.

Why is it that organisations in Malaysia would rather recycle than shredding papers? The answer is simple. It is all about collecting extra money for the employees in charge of managing company records. By right, customers' information which they claimed to be theirs should not be sold as it is logically not their property. In fact, the costs of papers incurred by organisations should be recycled back to the business and not for employees’ pocket money.

Sure enough by recycling, you would save the environment but what is stopping you from recycling the papers after been shredded? It is obvious that the value of papers would be less when it is shredded and employees would rather sell than paying for shredding service which involves management’s knowledge and approval.

Many people fail to understand that the value of information is by far much greater than the value of paper itself when it is recycled. The consequences of information being possessed by competitors, customers, suppliers and public as such can be very damaging. Employees may not be bothered if their organisation is being sued. It is therefore up to the top management to correct this and change the mindset of their workforce. In reality, employees should care as there will be a domino effect on them if the company loses money. Jobs may be lost as a result of negligence in taking care of confidential information.

Prior to April 2010, there was no Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB) to penalise offenders. The introduction of PDPB which will be enforced soon however, should change the whole scenario and alter the policies of organisations. Companies would especially have to be careful when dealing with customers data. The consequences and penalties for it can be substantial and could go up to as much as RM500k.

Shredding own documents and outsourcing an external company to do it involves time and money, but one must bear in mind that information leakages can happen anywhere and steps should be taken to mitigate it. Employees may resent their bosses by exposing confidential information and are more than happy to make side income by selling the papers instead. Onsite shredding in particular is an effective waste-management process and benefits the environment as well as ensuring your confidential information is protected. 

Information is not only valuable when it is held but also when disposing it.

Workshop on Data Protection & Workshop on New Competition Law

Public Lecture on " Personal Data  Protection Act 2010: Good Privacy Good Business "

MyShred Mobile would like to wish all Happy Chinese New Year! We will be closed on 3rd February 2011 (Thursday) and 4th February 2011 (Friday) . We will resume for business on the 7th February 2011 (Monday).

MyShred Mobile would like to wish all a merry Christmas and  a very happy New Year to all Malaysians!

Protect Your Clients

If you are one of the businesses that stores information on paper you need to take action to protect your clients. It does not have to cost the earth nor your budget to protect your clients from the massive consequences of document theft.  

You may possess information about your clients that is confidential, and if passed through the wrong hands, it could damage their reputation and expose their trade secrets. Therefore, it is your sole responsibility as the records manager to destroy these documents for them since you are entrusted with information that they deem to be very confidential. Many clients know that you are supposed to protect all their confidential information through secured destruction.