The media are full of management buzzwords such as corporate governance, legislation, retention, records management and information management. The problem with this is that they can lose their impact and obscure the meaning of the underlying issues and a myriad associated implications.
Buzzwords cloak the real meaning of and reasons for managing documents. Stock phrases can conceal meaning from people responsible for managing paper in their companies who must know the good, the bad and the ugly if they`re going to get it right.
Managing paper better means that when someone looks for a piece of paper with certain information on it they can find it, quickly. Also, the process that takes them to that point should not cost the company a lot of money.
Before the company can properly manage its paper, it needs to know about every type of information it has and what value it holds. Then it needs to decide what information it needs to keep and how long it needs to keep them.
Before the company can properly manage its paper, it needs to know about every type of information it has and what value it holds.
Paul Mullon, Information governance executive at Metrofile
That done, it should create a process to destroy the paper it doesn`t need. Keeping paper that is not needed costs money because the company has to pay for the room to store it in, and with paper that means having fire extinguishers that need to be regularly checked and a bunch of other safety equipment. It also means having to flip through all that paper when looking for just one sheet. That slows the process down, sometimes by days, and means companies have to pay more people to wade through unnecessary junk.
But how are companies supposed to know how long to keep a piece of paper? It`s logical to assume that if it has customer details on it, for example, then it must be kept for at least as long as the company has the customer. But then the law changes and some customer details written on paper must be kept for longer than the time that customer is filling the cash register. But how long? And what bits of information? And what information besides customer details? What about bank transfers, payments and receipts?
Besides the law, some companies want to give their customers better service, which again means they need to keep some details for longer than even the law requires.
Long time to find
Most of the people in charge have no way of knowing the answer although they do know they want to make customers happier and they don`t want to land in hot water with the law. That`s when they end up hiring lots of people to sift through mountains of paper to find the page that someone in the company is looking for because they`re too scared to ever throw anything away. It can take a long time to find, depending on how big the paper pile is, and sometimes it simply gets lost in a dusty corner of the basement.
Since the laws stating the time a company must keep its paper are difficult to find and are in several different places, it can be difficult to collect them into a single place where they can be easily read. Then again, the words themselves, even once found, can be confusing. The ideal would be a single "record retention" law, but in the absence of this perfect document, a simple guide would provide the next best solution.
Providing better customer service needs also means the people in charge need to know the best way of keeping paper and how best to look for specific pieces with specific details on them. A guide does exist, a collection of over 400 laws into a single reference tool so that people can see them. It has also made them easy to understand so that the people in charge can do something about them.
Consultants can be costly to bring into a company to root around in and clear the dust from a paper-filled basement. But it can quite easily cost the company more to leave the paper in the current state and location.
Getting hold of the guide is an important first step in making sure a company looks after its paper properly but it won`t give a company processes at a level of detail that says: "The PA then puts the air ticket order form in the pink file in the fourth drawer from the top in filing cabinet number 0036 in the storeroom." What it does say is that the air ticket order form should be kept for two years. The consultants come in and tell the people in charge that the PA then puts the air ticket order form in the pink file in the fourth drawer from the top in filing cabinet number 0036 in the storeroom.
Of course, if companies can get the consultants in before there is a basement full of paper, it`s a lot cheaper.
* If you are interested in a copy of the guide described above, please contact me on (011) 677-3000 or paulm@metrofile.co.za.
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