All
I was reading a previous post just now and I've had a thought and would
appreciate opinions.
With the exception of records that are to be kept for statutory or
legislative purposes what is the real reason for us applying retention
periods to "all other records"?
Is strikes me that in some but not all cases we aren't protecting the
interests of the organisation but rather attempting to predict when they
may be of use by an individual or group of individuals. For example in
compensation claims. Are we really in a position to try and predict this?
It seems like complete nonsense to me to retain a particular set of
records because they may be handy a couple of times during a 20 year
period - this is not financially viable and something I see as a total
waste of resources. Clearly records need to be assessed for historic or
educational value but how does this affect records that are neither but we
think we should hang onto them "just in case". To a large extent within
this organisation record retention is accidental as there have never been
any formal guidelines. In many cases information is found because someone
has been good enough to hang on to it!
Thanks
Claire
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