Safety In Your Mail Center (NAPSA)}—Office safety is no accident these days—especially in your company’s mail center. A growing numberof safety-minded managers are protecting their employees by seeking safer ways to process outbound and incoming mail. Here are somehints to help you have a safer mail room, from the experts at Pitney Bowes, a firm that invests more in the research and development of secure mailing technologies than any other company in the industry. In The Mail Center: Train mail center personnel to recognize potentially suspect material: mail marked “confiden- tial,” “personal” or “fragile”; exces- sive postage, using stamps; wrong title of employee, or titles without names; addresses that are poorly typed, handwritten or contain misspellings; oily stains, strange odors or powdery substances; return address that is not consistent with the state from which it was postmarked, or no return address; exceptionally large or lopsided parcels; envelopes or parcels with excessive wrapping material such as masking tapeorstring. * Conduct a background check prior to hiring employees. Keep doors locked as much aspossible. Maintain a sign-in sheet. Escort visitors to and from their destination within the mail center. “Authorized Personnel Only” signs should be posted on outside doors. Processing Outbound Mail: Use a postage meter, not stamps. Meters are licensed to the United States Postal Service and meter imprints are traceable to the point of original mailing. Restrict and monitor access to the postage meter. Lock the system when it’s not in use and use password protection. Limit or eliminate processing of personal mail. Weigh all materials to avoid Restrict and monitor access to the postage meter. Ensure that all your mail is safely sealed. Create an isolated “safe area” for opening material. @ postage overpayments. * Use address management software to ensure that mail is properly addressed. Always print your company name and return address on envelopes. Ensure that all your mail is safely sealed. * Consider using self-mailers or post cards for promotional mailings. Use a multi-carrier system for secure processing of outbound parcels. It ensures accurate addressing, provides labels and documents for carrier compliance, reports and tracks deliveries, sends e-mail notification of shipments to recipient and more. Managing Incoming Material: * Create an isolated “safe area” for opening material. * Use automatic mail opening devices. Track internal deliveries using a closed-loop, package management system. It creates inter- nal delivery labels; creates a delivery manifest for route, floor, building or inter-company trucks; captures electronic signature for every delivery; updates package status with details and more. Verify, by phone, all receipts from a “first time” messenger service before accepting delivery. Sign for each incoming package separately. To learn more about safe mail management, visit www.security. pb.com.
