Necessary elements of a document destruction policy

A policy is the set of underlying governing rules which have to be adhered to by the people belonging to a particular organization in its working. The policies are made by the governments as well as the private organizations. The policies set out the broad framework of guidelines which are required to set up effective communications and to direct the efforts in a particular direction. The policies ensure continued and consistent work, irrespective of who is in charge of the works. For the private organizations, there is a need to have the document destruction policy which will ensure that the documents are destroyed without losing the important ones. This is a vital part of the more elaborate documentation management process which focuses more commonly and in a major way on safe keep of the documents.
Documents destruction is the last stage of the documentation management process. The organizations need to destroy these for the want of more space, for cutting down expenses on the storage, for confidential requirements of the clients, to prevent the identity theft and even for reasons that the your competitor must not get hold of something unique or sensitive for your business. There varied requirement necessitate to have a well documented document destruction policy for the management document and all sorts of other documents.
So, some of the important elements of a policy made for destruction document are:
1. Obsolescence of documents: The documents should have reached the stage where these are not relevant anymore. This will depend on a number of factors like the time period, the nature of the documents, the change in the environmental settings and many others.
2. Time period: Every organization classified what all papers need to be retained for what time period and thereafter, the same shall be destroyed.
3. Exceptions to destruction: The secure document destruction shall not violate any law. When the requirement of the law and the legal process is that the documents might be required, then the same shall not be destroyed even when the stipulated time period has been reached. Many other similar exceptional provisions might need to be made for this purpose.
4. Legality: The documents destruction shall be legally tenable and justified. The secure destruction shall not run in to rough weather legally.
5. Authorization provisions: This is a key element of the confidential document destruction policy of the organizations. It is only after the due approval and authorization from the client or form a person with appropriate authority that the process shall be undertaken.
6. Security of destruction: Irrespective of the nature of the documents, the destruction has to be carried out in the most secured manner. The company policy might outline the type of process to be used for secure document destruction.
7. Eco-friendliness: The companies prefer to use those methods of documents destruction which do not harm the nature in any way. This could be one of the important elements of the modern document destruction policy.