Flexible office space works well for many businesses. Some companies rent a private room within a larger shared building, while others only need a few desks on certain days. There are also teams that use coworking locations as an extra place to work when the main office is not practical.
The setup can work very well, but confidential paper needs a little more thought when the business does not control the entire premises. Even with a private office, files may be taken to meetings, sent to shared printers or carried through communal areas used by people from other organisations.
Quite ordinary paperwork can reveal more than people realise. A name, account figure, phone number, internal note or customer detail may be enough to make a page something that should not be left lying around. In a shared office, there needs to be a sensible way of dealing with that paper at every stage, including secure document shredding once it is no longer needed.
Find Out How Confidential Waste Is Handled in the Building
A coworking provider will usually have arrangements in place for general waste and recycling, but businesses should not assume those arrangements are also suitable for confidential documents.
It is worth finding out exactly what happens to paper placed in any confidential waste facilities provided on site. For example:
- Is there a dedicated confidential waste service?
- Are confidential waste containers locked?
- Who can access them?
- Who is responsible for collection?
- What happens to the material after it leaves the building?
- Is the paper securely destroyed?
- Is confirmation of destruction available?
- These questions are particularly important when several organisations use the same facilities.
If the arrangements provided by the building do not meet the company’s requirements, the business may need to put its own confidential paper disposal process in place rather than relying on communal recycling or general waste collections.
Having that process agreed in advance also makes things easier for employees. They should not have to make a judgement each time they have an unwanted confidential document in their hands.
Keep Control of Paper in Communal Areas
Printers are one obvious example, along with meeting rooms and hot desks. These are also places where forgotten paperwork can easily turn up, whether that is a page left in the printer tray, notes from a meeting or a document tucked into a desk drawer.
Take a shared printer as an example. A member of staff sends a report to print, gets distracted by a call and returns ten minutes later. By the time the employee comes back, other people in the building may already have printed something, collected documents or walked past the machine.
Checking the printer name before sending a sensitive document can prevent a simple mistake, particularly in a building where several devices are available. The document should then be collected rather than left sitting in the tray. Some shared printers also have PIN or secure release functions, which can help when the paperwork should only be printed once the person who needs it is standing beside the machine.
The same principle applies elsewhere in the building. Documents used during a meeting should leave the room with the people who brought them in. Paperwork should not be left in desk drawers at a hot desk that another person may use the following morning.
Working papers deserve the same care. A rough draft, annotated copy or accidental printout may still show names, figures, account details or other information that should stay private. The fact that it was never intended to be the final document does not really change that.
The process does not need to become complicated. Staff mainly need to know that paper containing confidential information should not be abandoned in a shared area simply because they have finished using it. It still needs to be stored properly or moved into the agreed disposal process.
Decide Where Confidential Documents Can Be Stored
Some paperwork is only needed for a short period. Other records may have to remain available for weeks, months or considerably longer, so there needs to be somewhere suitable to keep them between uses.
That can be less straightforward in a coworking space. Employees may have a desk for the day but no permanent filing cabinet, archive room or locked cupboard of their own.
Depending on the arrangement, suitable options might include:
- Locked storage inside the company’s private office
- Restricted access cabinets
- Storage that only authorised employees can access
- The company’s main premises for records that do not need to remain in the coworking location
It can also help to think about how much paperwork actually needs to travel with an employee. Someone attending a meeting may only need a few pages from a larger file. Bringing the whole folder along can mean carrying and keeping track of far more confidential information than the task requires.
Staff should have a clear idea of what happens next when they finish using a document. In practice, most paperwork should have one of three destinations: it remains in active use, it returns to approved secure storage, or it enters the company’s secure destruction process once it is no longer required.
Documents should never be destroyed simply because they look old. The relevant retention and business requirements should always be checked first.
Create a Clear Route for Confidential Paper Disposal
One of the easiest ways for confidential paper to build up is to make disposal inconvenient.
If employees cannot immediately tell where an unwanted document should go, it tends to end up somewhere temporary. A desk drawer becomes a holding area. Then a box appears in a cupboard. Several months later, it may no longer be clear what has been stored or why.
A straightforward process is much easier to manage.
For businesses producing confidential paperwork on an ongoing basis, scheduled collections can provide a consistent route for material that has been approved for destruction. Staff know where the paper goes and collections take place at agreed intervals, reducing the need to store growing quantities of confidential waste around the workplace.
This can be especially useful in a shared building where ordinary recycling facilities are used by several organisations and may not be appropriate for sensitive material.
The amount of paper generated will naturally vary from business to business. A small team working largely online may produce relatively little, while a larger organisation handling client, financial or employee records could build up considerably more.
The disposal arrangement should reflect the actual volume rather than the type of office alone.
Set Rules for Documents Moving in and Out of the Workspace
Confidential paper does not necessarily remain inside the coworking building.
An employee might bring paperwork from the main office for a meeting, take notes while working in the shared space and then continue working from home the following day. Without a clear procedure, documents can gradually spread across several locations.
Businesses should therefore decide what staff can take with them and what needs to return to controlled storage.
Questions worth addressing include:
- Which types of records can leave the main office?
- Is confidential material allowed to be printed in the coworking space?
- Can employees take paper records home?
- Where should documents be stored between working days?
- How should paper be handled once the business has finished with it?
- If someone is not certain whether a record can be destroyed, who should they check with before doing anything?
The aim is not to make flexible working difficult. It is simply to avoid a situation where confidential paperwork moves from place to place without anyone knowing where it has ended up.
Review the Process as the Business Grows
A company’s approach to confidential paper should change as its working arrangements change.
A business may begin with a few desks in a coworking office and very little paperwork. Over time, the team grows, more employees use the location and more documents are created or brought into the space. What started as an occasional disposal issue can gradually become a regular requirement.
Periodic reviews can help identify whether:
- Confidential paper is accumulating between collections
- Employees know which disposal route to use
- Storage remains sufficient
- More people are printing or handling sensitive information
- The business has expanded into additional shared locations
- The current collection arrangement still suits the volume being generated
Sometimes the issue is not ongoing paper generation but an existing backlog. If a larger quantity of confidential records has accumulated and has been approved for destruction, a one off collection may be more practical than trying to deal with the material gradually.
The important thing is to choose an arrangement based on the amount of confidential paper involved and how frequently it is produced.
Managing Confidential Paper in a Flexible Workplace
Using a shared or coworking office does not have to make confidential paper difficult to manage. What matters is having a process that reflects the way the space actually works.
Businesses should understand how waste is handled within the building, keep control of documents in communal areas, provide appropriate storage and give employees a clear route for paper that is ready for secure destruction. The same rules should also apply when documents move between the coworking space, the main office and other working locations.
As the team grows, those arrangements are worth reviewing rather than allowing an informal system to continue indefinitely.
Pulp works with businesses throughout the Republic of Ireland that need a secure way to deal with confidential paper. Depending on the volume being produced, this can involve scheduled collections or a one-off collection for a larger quantity that has built up. Certificates of Destruction are also provided for paper shredding, giving businesses a record of completed destruction.
Contact us to discuss a confidential paper disposal arrangement that suits the way your business works.
