Choosing a Paper Shredder for Your Office
Paper shredders are a great piece of office equipment for maintaining document security, while maintaining neat and tidy desktops. But with the myriad brands of shredders available and countless associated options, knowing how to choose the best paper shredder for your office can be a challenge. In this piece, we’ll break down office shredder lingo and give you a shortcut to purchasing the right shredder for your office’s needs.
Considerations When Shopping for a Paper Shredder:
What are you shredding?
It’s important to have an idea of what you’ll be feeding your office shredder. Some shredders are great for steady diet of letter-size copy paper but might have trouble with 11×17, staples or paperclips. Other shredders can handle optical media like DVD’s or other sensitive printed information like credit cards.
Start by assessing whether any of the following are likely to end up in your shredder:
- Paper type/thickness/volume
- Staples/Paperclips
- DVD’s or other optical media
- Credit cards or thick plastic media
How often are you shredding?
Shredding a few documents in your private office is less taxing than high-volume shredding by an entire workgroup on a shared paper shredder. Naturally, you’ll want to make sure the shredder you choose for your office is aligned with the frequency of intended use. Consider the following when choosing your next office shredder:
- Duty cycles: How long can the shredder run before needing to cool down?
- Maintenance: How frequently will you have to clean and oil the machine and empty the bin or bag? Do you have a service provider to keep your shredder working at optimal levels?
How sensitive are the documents you are destroying?
Modern paper shredders range from simple strip shedding to more complex cross-cuts and even micro-cuts. You’ll want to factor this into your decision particularly if you’re looking for a shredder for financial documents or customer records. What’s more, laws like GDPR and Cayman’s Data Protection Regulation require proper disposal of such documents and having the right office shredder can help to meet some of those requirements.
○ Data protection compliance: If your company is a regulated entity, you will need to ensure your data destruction solution is compliant with local rules.
○ Paper cut types: Do you need a cross-cut shredder or a micro-cut shredder? Do you need to use a shredder certified to recognised document destruction standards?
The best paper shredder for your office...
Every office is different, so knowing what questions to ask before committing to buying a paper shredder is vital. Equipped with a checklist based on the questions above, you’ll be well on your way to sourcing a dependable shredder that meets your needs.
Kirk Office stocks a number of high-quality paper shredders backed by manufacturer warranty and factory-trained technicians. You can shop for some of our available options here. If you need help narrowing down your shortlist of office shredders, feel free to get in touch with one of our document solutions experts to point you in the right direction.