Business Connections: Building Rapport with Vendors

Posted on: 11 September 2015

Your employees will expect you to keep their personal information safe from outsiders, but how you do so has often been left up to individual businesses. There are a few checklist items that should be included in any company confidentiality system. Here are some tips for keeping employee information safe.

Provide a Detailed Confidentiality Clause

The first step to protecting yourself and your employees is to provide a confidentiality policy that details what information is protected, and how. Things like employees' bank account information and home address are a given, but you'll need to think about how you treat information such as intraoffice memos and emails, pay rate, and employment status.

At the same time, your confidentiality policy should remind employees that part of keeping this information safe is not sharing it with others; make your employees liable for keeping their coworkers' personal information safe.

Use Confidentiality Training

While human resources and bookkeeping teams can especially benefit from confidentiality training, all office employees can benefit from learning about how to deal with sensitive documents and information. Many companies use training sessions to show employees how to keep information secure, who to share private information with, and how to handle an information leak.

Storing Employee Files

Sensitive employee documents should always be kept in a locked drawer with limited access to HR personnel and managers. If you want to take things a step further, you can keep these sensitive documents in a case with biometric locks that accept the fingerprints of authorized users. If you store copies electronically as well, make sure that these are encrypted or saved in password protected folders.

Dealing with Outdated Information

Confidentially can become endangered when you're dealing with old documents that need to be disposed of, such as paperwork for employee exits or old contracts. Document shredding is one of the simplest ways to manage outdated information. You can file sensitive information for a specific period of time, such as a year, before sending it to a document shredding facility. These companies have their own confidentiality policies to guarantee the safety of your sensitive information. As an added benefit, some archiving and shredding facilities will store your old documents for a period of time before automatically shredding them for you.

Prioritizing confidentiality for your employees isn't just good for your workers; it also protects you from liabilities down the road. By maintaining a secure database of information, you will take one step closer to preventing data leaks and financial loss. 

To learn more, contact a document shredding company like Vital Records Control.