For us to be successful in managing the content within our organizations, we need to have the users’ involvement.
Contrary to what we are reading, we are not trying to make them records management professionals.
Staffs in organizations are required to adhere to Human Resource policies (no sexual harassment or hostile work environment issues) and budget controls and it is not suggested that we are making them Human Resource, or Finance, experts.
What we need to do is educate our staff that they are creating important content through their work activities and this content needs to be properly managed. They need to know that there is a proper place to save their records.
I was delighted to learn, last week, that the Canadian Department of Defense has initiated an IM Awareness training program for all their staff. They know that they will not be able to manage all their content without the participation of the users. This is exactly what is needed!
I fully believe in using technologies, such as autosuggestion, autocategorization and autoclassification to support the users, but there will be many times when the content owner has to make a decision and take action.
We are asking our users to think differently about their work and to work in new ways. These new ways of working are not that different from what we are already doing, such as dragging and dropping emails into our personal folders.
Yet, we know that a change will result in push back from the users. So what else is new!
Successful records management professionals have brought about changes within their organization in the past, both in perspectives and actions. We have faced up to the push back and brought about improvements to our organizations.
To broaden the users’ perspective on their office work – to better manage our organizations records, we have the answers to the question: What’s in it for me? for users and all levels of management.
Tell us about your experiences in changing the perspectives of users, and other staff, towards content/records management within our organization.
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