I can hear you saying “we develop Retention Schedules to determine how long we should keep Records generated/processed/retained by ourselves&rdquo
In the context of records retention, however, such inexactitude can be highly problematic
This blog is the first part of a series that asks the questions, raises some issues and maybe answers a few questions about the use of a Records Retention Schedule. When your senior management said “we must have a Records Retention Schedule (RRS)” did you feel a sigh of relief?
This is as true in the ERM environment as much as in the paper-based one. The Retention Schedule, of course, takes into account applicable regulatory requirements. Final retention periods in the schedule, however, may be longer than any regulatory retention requirements because they are based on many factors (depending upon the records and function)
Fewer retention category choices (due to bigger, fewer retention buckets) in a retention schedule can lead to more consistent records management compliance as long as the risks of potentially longer retention periods are taken into account. Big bucket retention schedules (100-150 record series/retention categories for an enterprise) are more cost effective to maintain and increase filing accuracy for both manual and automatic classification
The current General Records Schedule (GRS) from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is based on subjects and document types/format
Organizations invest significant human and financial resources in developing and updating record retention schedules. What I don’t see is a follow-up effort to implement the retention schedule. In a recent project SMEs asked, “What’s the point of updating the retention schedule if retention is not being implemented, and documents are not disposed?” Clearly there are barriers to systematic disposition, and I think the people-process-technology model is helpful in classifying the barriers: People – In-house lawyers are leery of destroying records, even when retention periods have been satisfied
Build and lead a team with key stakeholders to systematically streamline RM processes to enhance adoptability of future ECRM systems. Start with the retention and legal hold processes: For records, streamline your retention schedule to 50-100 record series/buckets . Julie Gable, Carol Brock, and others (including me) promulgate the benefits of applying the big bucket approach to retention schedules
Reconciling your company’s legal citations and best practices on the draft records retention schedule is a ten darn-it [1] job...Tracking the changes for citations and best practices between the published version of the schedule and your new one
The disposition date for a particular personnel file would, thus, potentially be X number of years after the termination date of the employee to whom the file relates, which would be written as “Termination + X years” (or equivalent) in the retention schedule
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