Benefits of a retention and disposition programme

• Reduced space requirements
• Improved operational efficiency
• Equipment and supply cost savings
• Consistency in records disposition
• Compliance with legal retention requirements
• Protection during litigation or government investigation

Think about the filing cabinet in your office.  Do you have a list of the important records in your filing cabinet?  If you came into work today and the cabinet was gone – would you be able to replace all the documents?

Do you ‘clean‘ out your filing cabinet every now and then and discard what you think you don‘t need into file 13 (the dustbin) or do you have a list of the documents indicating how long you should keep each one and when and how they should be disposed of? Do you work according to a schedule?

When you place a record into your filing cabinet – do you mark it down on a list and give it a retention or disposal date?

Consider setting up a database on MS Excel or MS Access where you can enter the name of a record when you are about to file it and a date when it should be reviewed to consider whether it should be active or inactive (perhaps moved to the archives) and when it should be destroyed and how.  It is always important to get written approval from the owner of a record before it is destroyed!  It will be time consuming to set up but it would give you a better handle of the records in your office.

The same considerations should be given to electronic records.  If you move over to storing your records electronically, it should run in parallel with your paper records.  Once you have decided to store records electronically, you should not add anything to your paper records.  Your electronic system should be a ‘copy’ of your paper system with regards to files and folders.  Your paper system should be kept up to date according to your retention and disposition schedules and in time will phase out.