The Psychology of Records Management - Stop Apologizing! by Craig Grimestad

In the last 12 years or so that I have been exclusively focused on Records and Information Management (now Information Governance - for me it was always about governance), an image has formed in my mind that I believe sometimes represents Records Managers as they propose funding needs or improvement plans to their leadership, looking for company resources including access to employees, manpower, and funding. What I see is a middle-age, middle sized gentleman, bald on top with wisps of hair on the sides and back of his head, and a thin moustache. He is nervously clutching and fingering the rim of his hat that he holds it in front of him with his head down looking at his shoes. It is almost as if he feels a need to apologize for needing resources to accomplish his business objectives.

Now if your plan is no good and will just consume the company's time and money with no real benefit - OK, I get it - go ahead and hang your head. But if your plan (as it should) will save the company money, improve efficiency, and reduce risk, then hold your head high - you need to go to the front of the line! Most Records Management projects are self-funding, possibly even in the first year. Even if this one is not, it is likely among the highest benefit to cost ratios of all of the funding requests. Let's break it down:

Saving Money:

Storage - Most companies are paying more for storing records than necessary. Whether it is non-business records, duplicates, or records that have fulfilled their retention requirement, there is a lot of potential saving in bringing your records storage into compliance with your Records Retention Schedule (RRS). I digress, but when doing this with my former employer (after upgrading to a best practices RRS) we found 100+ year old personnel records, retired supervisors and managers' office files (it had been the practice to box up all of their office files and send them offsite), coffee pots, and Christmas trees.

Litigation - Discovery costs are driven higher when records that are eligible for disposal are retained. Whether paper or electronic, reducing the volume of records to be searched and reviewed by disposing of expired records, convenience copies, and non-records can reap significant savings.

Improve Efficiency

Creation, Storage, Retrieval and Disposal - Efforts to standardize and facilitate the creation and management of records through their entire lifecycle can reap large dividends. Eliminating (or reducing) personal repositories and establishing official repositories (electronic and paper) where employees are certain to be able to store and retrieve the latest version of records, easily produces a significant impact on productivity. If you are able to save, on average, just 5 minutes out of every hundred for the average employee - that's a 5% savings! Multiply that 5% (actually a low estimate) by your payroll cost, and the potential value in redirected employee's use of time can be staggering! Any projects your company is trying to get off the ground? You may just have released the manpower to make that happen!

Reduce Risk

Elimination - As records complete their lifecycle and fulfill their purpose, they transition from having high value as an asset to becoming a liability. Efforts to promote and facilitate disposal of records per the Records Retention Schedule not only saves the company money as noted above, but also reduces corporate risk. If you have no further use of your records - who are you keeping them for?

Management teams often know they have to do something for Information Governance, but don't know what that something is. Your thoughtful considered plan for improving Information Governance will be like a cool cup of water to a person anguishing with thirst. What you propose is at least a piece of what is sorely needed by the company to efficiently govern its information and records. So hold your head high, look them in the eye, and just for good measure, give them that special little grin that tells them they're going to love hearing what you are about to tell them.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2014/service-lines/records-management-an...
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