Document Retention and Destruction What Human Resource Professionals Must Know

This topic will help you learn the legal requirements for document management policies and understand how to implement the practical considerations unique to their respective companies. Best practices will be emphasized, especially litigation avoidance and satisfying legal requirements.

Make sure you are in full compliance with your current document retention and destruction policies. Many employers lack a document management policy altogether, resulting in inconsistent document retention and destruction a sure fire path to litigation and spoliation claims and little to no reliable protection for confidential information. Another substantial number of employers rely on generic policies whose sources are unknown, are from a different industry, or rely on a different state’s laws, just to cite a few of a myriad of problems with generic policies. The enormity of creating a model policy unique to a specific employer creates a psychological barrier that hinders the development and implementation of a much needed document management policy.

Importance of Document Retention and Destruction

Record retention in the past was a mundane affair. File cabinets stuffed with paper served the purpose best. Today, new forms of information and communication storage as well as data retrieval systems are more prevalent than ever before.

Some of the major accounting firms have had bad publicity in the press for questionable record keeping and handling. Many other companies have shut down operations for the same reason. Records today are subjected to greater monitoring and regulation. However, appropriate record maintenance is necessary not only in the context of law but also from the perspective of efficient business functioning. 

The most critical thing to address in context of records is their safe maintenance. Lost records lead to loss in tax advantages, business opportunities, and time. In addition, businesses that do not keep their records safe may face difficulties in situations like hacker attack and fire breakout when recovery may be impossible.

Role of Human Resource Professionals

The key to document retention is the extensive training to human resource professionals in managing, organizing, and retaining key business information and records. The human resource professionals can make the right policies and put them in place for appropriate management of records. However, each and every employee must be guided by these policies with the adequate sense of responsibility towards safe record keeping.

Document Retention and Destruction: The Right Way

Document disposal is as important as its retention. It must be done in a right way. Business must know which records are to be retained and figure out the least time for which they must be retained. The trend is growing towards retaining documents for a longer time than it used to be in the past.

There are some records like corporate governance, minutes, bylaws, and shareholder agreements that must be permanently maintained and their copies must be with the business attorneys. There are other records like leases and agreements that must be kept safe at least until ten years after their expiry. However, intellectual property documents must be retained forever. The same goes for insurance policies since past claims can create issues many years later.

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