Evolving the records management culture: from ad hoc to adherence implementing an enterprise-wide records management program requires executive-level support, communication, training, incentives, and an action plan that will motivate employees to give up their ad hoc methods and adhere to program policies and procedures.

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Prior to implementing a records management program, an organization is dependent on its staff members to manage records through ad hoc and person-dependent methods. They may be using technologies that are not designed to accommodate and enforce retention schedules, and they may be maintaining records in systems that suit their various departmental needs but not the organization's requirements for enterprise-wide records retrieval and use. In today's business environment, with its prevalence of electronic documents and e-mail messages, this culture puts organizations at risk for their practices surrounding records retention and regulatory compliance and results in lost productivity and extra costs for records storage and maintenance.

Even after developing new records management program policies, procedures, and retention rules, an organization's records management culture will need to evolve to close the gap caused by embedded personal work habits and department silos if it is to have a successful enterprise-wide records management program. Eliminating this gap is accomplished by creating understanding and awareness among all staff members, training, and implementing enabling technologies so employees will be personally motivated to undertake new practices in compliance with the new policy and procedures.

Policy Development

Evolving the records management culture starts with policy development. A policy is a statement of standards and guidelines necessary for the organization to perform its mandated functions. Policies guide the organization's decisions and actions. As records management is an enterprise-wide business process that spans all departments, the policy must be developed at the highest level of the organization (i.e., approved by the governing committee or group).

The records management policy must assign accountabilities to the appropriate level of staff. The policy, therefore, should

* State the purpose of the records management policy

* Define key terms

* State what staff positions are responsible for, including, for example:

--The integrity of records at the creation phase

--The comprehensiveness of case files

--Intellectual and physical records maintenance controls

--Authorizing records destruction (at a minimum, in the department and within the central records office)

--Suspension, when needed, of scheduled records destruction

--Designating of the records custodians within a department

--Accountability for maintaining records series (reference to the classification and retention schedule)

A policy crafted to address records management accountabilities will eliminate a situation in which an employee can claim that he or she is unaware of his or her responsibilities or argue that "records management does not apply to my position" Because all employees create, maintain, and use electronic and paper-based records, the policy does apply to each employee. The policy-driven accountabilities will make it crystal dear who is responsible for each element of the records management business process.

Procedures and Their Function in Records Culture

The details of how to make the policy operational are typically contained in the records management procedures. Procedures explain how to implement the records management policy and define business process responsibilities, terminology, processes, and applicable database or technology usage.

Explicit, concise procedures are the primary reference tool for staff members who work with the records. The objective in crafting procedures is to eliminate the possibility of employees claiming that they don't perform records management functions because the procedures are confusing or not accessible. Procedures should make it easy for custodians and other staff to perform their roles.

Records management procedures are likely to be followed if they streamline departmental business processes while meeting enterprise-wide records policy. They should be defined at a broad level to ensure compliance without hindering operations. At a minimum, the following components of the records management pro gram should be documented by dear procedures in order to give custodians and other staff (e.g., those who create and retrieve records or information technologists) the guidelines required to meet records management policy requirements:

* Management of active paper-based records

--Definition of the physical and intellectual control methods, who is responsible, etc.

* Management of inactive, stored, paper-based records

--The standards for storage centers

--The central inventory of stored records

--How to assign disposition dates with reference to the retention schedules

* Management of electronic documents

--How the retention schedules will be applied

--Custodianship

* Management of imaged documents

--Statement of applicable standards

--How retention schedules will be applied

--Custodianship

* Management of vital records

--Who is responsible

--How the protection methods are implemented

* Records management and electronic document management technologies

--Lifecycle management, filing, and retrieval

--Handling non-records, transitory records, and official records

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In short, procedures will help evolve the information management culture by providing employees with the detailed enterprisewide guidelines to implement components of the policy.

Training and Communications

Identifying Audiences

Training and communications will be designed and directed toward segmented audience groups specific to each organization. All employees should be aware of a basic level of knowledge and understanding--even if a small group is exempt from playing an active role in maintaining and retrieving records. It would be highly unlikely for more than a few employees in a typical organization to claim that "records management policy does not apply to me:' For most organizations, records management policy will apply to the following groups:

* Senior managers

* Department managers

* Records custodians

* Frontline staff and knowledge workers (the majority of employees)

* Exempt group, those few staff who never create or refer to records

The names of the audience groups are derived from the roles that are outlined in the policy and procedures. Depending on the size of the organization, it may be possible, even necessary, to create a list of employees within each group or to use the identity management system within the human resources (HR) department to indicate which employees are members of each group.

Senior managers: This high-level group, which includes the president, vice-presidents, and executive directors, requires information about why the program is underway, what its benefits are, and, at a broad level, how the implementation will occur, so it can provide visible support for the records management program. Senior management support is often cited as the single most important factor for determining records management success.

Managers: The managers' group, which includes directors and managers of departments and operational units, has destruction approval responsibility and accountability for records series and integrity as allocated in the classification and retention schedule. Perhaps most importantly, this group pushes the records retention stop button; that is, department managers halt destruction for specific case files should there be pending litigation, audit, management review, or other requirement. This group's lack of awareness of or commitment to the program can create the largest obstacles to a program's success, so training and communications are key for its members.

Records custodians: This group comprises the members of the organizational staff who are responsible for maintaining physical control of paper-based records and intellectual control of paper-based and electronic records and for managing the phases of the records life cycle (e.g., annual purging, issuing destruction notices, and preparation of semi-active records) for records in all formats. It may take months--even years--to determine who the custodians are for new records management programs. Once identified, staff turnover often means custodian changes, so these changes must be tracked. It is important to ensure that the records custodian roles and tasks are written into their position descriptions, so the records manager should liaise with the HR department regarding custodial tasks.

Frontline staff and knowledge workers: All other employees constitute this group, which plays a lesser role in the physical maintenance of records but a significant role in creating and retrieving them within various departments. Knowledge workers are those employees whose primary focus involves collecting, processing, or analyzing information and data as opposed to physical goods.

Records that stem from frontline staff and knowledge workers (e.g., engineers, sales workers, claims officers, HR advisors, and accountants) without doubt have the greatest chance of not being managed according to organizational policy and procedures. This is because knowledge employees may not recognize official records as being distinct from transitory documents and may neglect submitting them to the designated repositories for filing.