Why is Having a Record Retention Policy and Schedule Important for your Business?

Every organisation, while committing any nature of transaction, generates a record of the transaction – this is obvious, nothing new here. But what actually matters here is that for how long that document should be retained, and why? The reason behind this is very simple - sometimes you have to do it to keep a record of your transaction for future reference, or sometimes because it is plainly obligatory under the law. However, some documents are really important and need to have a longer shelf life, but what of the documents that are not important? Maintaining them will simply be a cumbersome task and will add to the expense of the organisation. To overcome the situation, the government has made some guidelines describing when to get rid of such documents and retaining which documents for how long; and how to properly destroy them once they have outlived their purpose. These guidelines are known as records retention and disposition schedule.

The Record retention schedule holds a great importance for an organisation because it captures all the records created and used by the organization in the course of the business, and indicates how long the records are required to be retained. It is needed to be done and applied in a systematic manner as it forms a part of the company’s record management strategy. In order to ensure good faith in the organisation and a sound record management program, both development and implementation of retention schedule is important.

Though it is not required to explain the advantages of having a records retention schedule, but a wise businessman makes sure to study all the concerns before Investing his time and money into something. As your business grows with time, so do the records associated with transactions. In such cases, the associated risk of not having a record retention policy increases too. In order to establish how long to retain a concerned document requires the development and implementation of a credible record retention policy. The absence of good record retention policy or the irregularities in company’s records can crumble your company’s image and the assumption of good faith in your organisation. But also keeping the records for longer time than the dictated guidelines without having a valid reason may expose your organisation to unnecessary risks.

The successful development and implementation of an effective retention policy and document retention schedule can realise the following benefits in your business organisation:

• When you follow a good retention policy, you will have the exact idea of the available resources in the organisation. That way you can improve the overall utilization of resources.
• Because a retention policy tells you when and how to kill outlived records, it will help you to control the unrestrained growth of record volumes.
• It improves the ability to locate and retrieve the records easily whenever required.
• And most important of all, it reduces the litigation risks.

For any kind of help regarding retention schedules and policies, please visit www.irch.com

About The Author

Brielle Lawson is a member of the board of directors for a multinational. Policy formulation and efficiency improvement of organizations has been her forte. She believes records retention is a very important part of growth, and recommends www.irch.com for professionalism.

IRCH provides market-leading products and services enabling customers to reduce costs and risks through implementing legally-defensible records retention and destruction practices.