Records Management: Don t Be at Guy

36% of all respondents offer no or very limited records training.*

Protecting your records means protecting your company's history, business decisions, accounting and more. Do you really want to be the records manager who authorizes the destruction of your company's vital information simply because no one took the proper steps to protect it in the first place?

Your records and information are the lifeblood of your business. They tell the story of your company and should be kept secure; whether for litigation purposes, audits or even a 50th anniversary celebration. With April being National RIM month, what better way to kick things off than by getting your records and information management (RIM) program in order? Maybe your RIM processes could use a refresher. A little effort to get your employees more involved in carrying out the policies across your company can go a long way.

Train new employees and give existing employees an update on how to properly manage your information. Think about it you're sitting at your desk and you get an email that says please sign your name on the dotted line giving permission to destroy your company's information because the records have been so poorly protected that now they are ruined or missing. And then the next thing you know, the company wants to celebrate a major anniversary and can't find any information on where they started, past employees or how they've grown. Who is everyone going to look to? You. And then you become that guy. Doesn't sound like a fun time.

Keep your records secure for your own peace of mind, but also for the sake of your business.

Establish secure processes for storing, retrieving and destroying records, including a best-practice retention schedule update, legal hold process, a documented chain-of-custody and certificate of destruction. If some or all of your physical records lack proper classification, classify them and record the metadata as the foundation of their management. Because a large scale classification project can be costly and time consuming, engage your records management vendor to undertake a data integrity project. It's a much more cost effective way of learning what you have, what should stay and what should go. Once completed, you'll have an auditable, defensible RIM program. And by doing so, you'll be defined as the trusted employee responsible for saving the company time, money and its historic legacy.

In this day and age, with so many new technologies and tools, a company with a strong history for compliance and defensibility goes a long way for both your reputation and your bottom line.

*Source: Iron Mountain Compliance Benchmark Report: A View into Unified Records Management

LINK:	http://blog.ironmountain.com/2013/records-management-and-storage/recor...
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