Information Advantage

Records Management: It’s Not Rocket Science

Melissa Strawhecker — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:19:06 +0000

A few weeks ago, I was interviewing someone for a job in our Privacy & Compliance (P&C) group. Since records management falls under P&C in my organization, I wanted to know if this candidate had any background or knowledge of records management. His response took me completely off-guard. He said, “Well, it’s not rocket science.” At first I was a little offended. After all, this is what I do. I’m the Corporate Records Manager for Iron Mountain! Later that night I was thinking about what he said, and he’s right – records management is NOT rocket science. In fact, we all practice records management every day without even thinking about it. When we get an important email, we typically don’t leave it in our active mailbox, we move it somewhere where it won’t get inadvertently deleted, or save it to an archive. When we get the mail at home, we open it, pull out the bills, discard the junk, and file the bank statements. We do our taxes and keep a copy for our records. We may not know the laws or regulations that are behind retaining records, but we know we have to keep them for a certain period of time because they provide evidence of something. They may be evidence of a purchase, taxes paid, bills paid, etc. Here are some examples of what we retain in our personal lives because it’s important:

Bank Statements
Taxes
Receipts
Warranties

The same principles apply to business. We keep documents that are created and/or received on a daily basis that provide evidence of our organization, business functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, and internal or external transactions. These documents are all considered records.

The only difference between records we keep at home and records that we keep for business is that, for the most part, we know how long we need to keep the records at home. Bank statements can be shredded once all the transactions are cleared, taxes need to be kept for seven years, I keep receipts and warranties (for big purchases) until I no longer have the product or the warranty has expired.

Business records are a little more complicated. You may not know off the top of your head that personnel files need to be kept for eight years after someone leaves the company, or that that creepy picture of brains in a jar is considered part of the company’s archive and should be retained forever! That’s why all companies should have a records retention schedule that their employees can refer to and determine how long they need to keep things. The retention periods provided in most records retention schedules are intended to be as short as possible to minimize the volume of records while still complying with all legal, contractual, or operational requirements. Records should neither be kept longer than the periods stated in the schedule, nor should they be destroyed or discarded before the stated retention period expires. The bottom line is if you don’t know how long to keep a business record, look it up. Better to be safe than sorry.

And the moral of my little story is: “No, records management is not rocket science”. It’s more like common sense for business. And by the way, he didn’t get the job.

It’s Going to take IMagination

Melissa Strawhecker — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 12:34:58 +0000

I’ve been in the Records Management industry since 1990. Back then, a mouse was a rodent, a cloud was a puffy thing in the sky, and the latest and greatest technology was barcode scanning! Can you imagine what it was like to be a Records Manager back then? Keeping up with regulatory compliance meant your program adhered to a legally compliant records retention schedule. Before, you could find a missing file by looking in one of two places – it was either in a box in the archive or in someone’s filing cabinet.

And then there’s now. If your information isn’t unified, there are a plethora of places to look – it might be in a box, on someone’s hard drive, in an email, on a SharePoint site, on your mobile device. The possibilities seem endless.

The ARMA Conference is right around the corner and I’m really looking forward to this year’s event. Not only because it’s in Chicago (what a great city!), but because of the educational offerings. So much has changed over the past year that I’m finding it hard to keep up and look forward to spending some time with my peers and finding out what they’re doing to stay abreast of all the changes in our industry.

If you haven’t had a chance already, I’d highly recommend Dana Moore’s blog which was posted recently. She does a really nice job of capturing some of the challenges we all face and explaining how she’s thinking about all of this a little differently. It’s these types of conversations and interactions I look forward to every year.

As a CRM, part of the ICRM Code of Ethics says that I “shall strive for continuing proficiency and effectiveness in their profession.” Of course I agree with this, but how on earth do you keep up when today’s trends include: GARP, Cloud, Social Media, Litigation, Risk Management, eDiscovery, Information Governance, Instant Messaging, Cyber Threats, Electronically Stored Information (ESI), Privacy, Auto-Classification, SharePoint … Basically, if you can imagine it, it will probably be on this list next year!

So this year, my goal is to be a sponge. To learn as much as I can from all of the session offerings, to spend some time on the show floor, and to connect with my peers to share ideas about how to navigate through this information jungle and still keep my sanity.

Can’t wait to see you there!

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Cleaning Up for Records & Information Management Month

Melissa Strawhecker — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:09:26 +0000

As the weather gets warmer, if you’re like me, you think about spring cleaning. In my personal life this typically means washing windows, cleaning gutters, doing the “winter/spring changeover” with my clothes, and basically getting organized. Out with the old, in with the new, right?! So, why wouldn’t we do this in our professional lives too?

At Iron Mountain, we do! Every April, in honor of ARMA’s Records & Information Management month, we do a “Cleanup Day” in our offices. This is a day when employees can devote a few hours to purging their filing cabinets of inactive files (you know the ones – you haven’t referred to them in over a year!), and boxing them up for offsite storage. Filling the shred bins with files that have met their retention requirements, and finally getting rid of those old floppy disks & CD’s in the “plastics only” shred containers. It’s also a time to clean out mailboxes too – deleting all of those old lunch invitations, jokes, invitations to seminars, webinars and the like, and basically old stuff that has no relevance anymore and was never considered a record in the first place! Often the most difficult part is deciding what can be thrown out or deleted, what needs to be kept, and what hard copy records should be scheduled for secure destruction.

Included with the Cleanup Day communication are guidelines and helpful hints on how to purge records with a no-nonsense approach. Here’s an example of some helpful hints:

Keep all essential and active records material on-site
Package appropriate inactive records material and send to off-site storage (at Iron Mountain, of course!)
Eliminate duplicate record copies and purge all non-records materials

In reality, we should be using this approach each and every day. But we all get busy, and some things slide. As the Corporate Records Manager at Iron Mountain, it is my job to provide the tools and guidance so people know how to manage the records they create on a daily basis. That means providing Records Management training to all new employees, and a refresher course for all those veteran Mountaineers. And at least once a year, devote a day for them to focus on putting their house in order. It helps me to do my job better, protects my company from potential risk, and keeps us in compliance with the many laws and regulations out there regarding records retention.

It feels so good when it’s all done. You have more space, everything is neat and organized, you stop getting that pesky “Your Mailbox is Over Its Size Limit” message, and you’re ready to conquer your next project with confidence!! That’s how we welcome spring at the Mountain – What will you do to get organized this spring? Please share your Spring-Cleaning plans in the comment field below.

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Information Advantage

Records Management: It’s Not Rocket Science

It’s Going to take IMagination

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Cleaning Up for Records & Information Management Month

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