For many business owners or managers of both large and small companies, they often times ask why outsource document destruction efforts when it can "easily" be done in house with the purchase of a paper shredder. While this is tempting, but what people often lose sight of is the other costs of destroying sensitive documents.
So you buy yourself a top of the line heavy duty paper shredder capable of handling your work load. Let's assume that you size it properly - too small and it will take an hourly employee much longer than it should, too big and you've wasted your money on excess capability that will likely never be used to its fullest potential - it's lost money either way you look at it.
Using your properly sized machine, we can estimate that it'll take approximately 20 minutes to destroy one ream of paper. How many reams of paper does your company go through on a daily basis? Let's go small - one ream a day. Paying an office employee $10 / hour will cost around $60 per month. Let's think about this though... what if you have your skilled employees who make $40 / hour doing it. They may not be standing around destroying documents for 20 minute at a time, but over the course of the week... it adds up - so your cost may have just quadrupled there. Think of the lost productivity standing in front of a shredder.
Think about the cost of a shredder itself... plus the cost of maintenance... plus the cost of disposal. These things all add up over time, and they are recurring costs. It's not a one time investment in a piece of machinery. There is upkeep associated with it.
When making sound business decisions there comes a certain point when the economics of doing it in house versus outsourcing comes into play. When does a professional paper shredding service make sense for you and your business? It may be sooner than you think when you add it all up. Service for less than $150 / month can be found, and discounts for high volume customers can be had. Do your homework before buying your company a paper shredder.