Mark Diamond (markdiamond@contoural.com) is the CEO of Contoural Inc. in Los Altos, California, USA.
Many companies today worry about how much paper information they are accumulating, but employees’ habits of hoarding electronic documents represent a bigger risk. While some of these electronic documents are records or have business value, much of the emails and files that employees save are either expired records, duplicative, or simply older documents with little or no business value. Every year more and more electronic information accumulates on desktops, file shares, and many other official and nonofficial repositories. This ongoing accumulation represents increased risk and cost. The risk of unmanaged privacy, intellectual property, and other sensitive information compounds data storage and discovery costs. Yet attempts to prevent employees hoarding or increase electronic efficiency often fail.
Hoarding behavior is a learned habit
People develop habits over years and sometimes decades. Electronic storage of files and emails is second nature. Desktops, file shares, cloud locations, and offline email PST files are all subsumed digital oases of information. Moving this electronic information to the cloud does not stop—but often facilitates—more hoarding. This creates a culture where data accumulation is accepted. And organizational culture and employee behavior, once established, takes considerable effort to change. Just telling employees to change typically does not work. Nor does simply threatening them that they need to adapt to a new process. You can have the best policies and technologies, but if employees are not using them, all is for naught. When organizations effectively apply change management, even stodgy, disinterested, or recalcitrant business groups will get on board.
Create a modern and compliant records retention schedule
Companies need a better approach to records management led by a modern, compliant, and easier-to-execute records retention schedule. At the highest level, a good schedule provides the foundation for an effective records and information governance program. A modern schedule not only drives compliance, but also saves time and effort on downstream discovery, privacy, disposition, and other compliance initiatives. Most important, it can be a boon for the business, making high-value information more accessible and easier to share.
While the hardest part of a new program is that first step, if that step is done correctly, the rest of the process is much easier to complete. A records retention policy provides overall guidance on the management of records in an organization. A policy has three primary purposes:
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It defines records and nonrecords, including short-term working documents, and states that records must be kept for the duration of the retention period listed in the records retention schedule;
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It states that once a record’s or working document’s retention period has expired, it must be destroyed; and
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In the event of a legal hold, the policy and retention schedule are suspended for the records under the hold.
Typically, a schedule is an addendum to the policy. The policy gives force and effect to the schedule. It states that records must be kept according to the retention requirements of the schedule. The schedule is effectively a reference to an organization’s records with information on how long those records must be kept.
